A Resonating Plane
press release
Keiko Narahashi and Justin Q Martin
A Resonating Plane
October 19-November 18, 2018
Opening Reception: Friday, October 19, 7-10pm
Underdonk is pleased to present “A Resonating Plane”, an exhibition of new work by Justin Q Martin and Keiko Narahashi. Working in the hard and soft materials of metal, clay, and string, Narahashi and Martin use a visual language of stillness.
Narahashi states, “I like to use clay in a stretched-out, infra-thin state as a drawing medium, or as a skin between inside and outside; somewhere between inhabiting a body, and considering a body as abstracted and disembodied”. By using clay in it’s thinnest state, Narahashi tests the physical limits of her medium. Her sculptures are parts of bodies as much as they are planes, bending, hovering, leaning, grounding, and holding.
Martin, working with the pliant qualities of metal, wood, and string, constructs armatures. They are open structures onto which he melds symbols that seem to demarcate the passage of time. Working in a shallow field, the clarity of his rules is apparent. The sense of the weight of things: a pair of eyes and hands brings us closer to attention.
Considered and deliberate, the forms conjured by Martin and Narahashi have resonance, leading us into a pre-dawn state of being beyond language and literal space.
Keiko Narahashi was born in Tokyo, Japan, grew up in North Carolina, and lives in NYC. She explores the principles of painting through clay, metal, paper, photography, and paint. Her first experience with the mysterious transformation between dimensions occurred when, as a child she saw a tin can flattened by a train.
She received a BFA from Parsons school of Design, and an MFA in Painting from Bard College. Recent exhibitions include Jason McCoy Gallery (NYC), Brennan & Griffin (NYC), Deli Gallery (Queens), 106 Green (Brooklyn), Eric Firestone Gallery (East Hampton, NY), and Longhouse Projects (NY), among others. She was a recipient of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation studio grant (2005) and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Grant in Painting (2006). Her work has been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Vogue, The Brooklyn Rail, and The New York Times. She was recently featured in “New York Studio Conversations, Part II”, edited by Stephanie Buhmann (2018, The Green Box, Berlin).
Justin Q Martin works in Brooklyn. He graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art and Cornell University. He has had a solo show at Sardine in Brooklyn and participated in group shows including 106 Green, helper, and Underdonk. He works with Nicholas Moenich to produce TASP, an occasional artist zine.
Curated by Elisa Soliven
For more information please contact: [email protected] or (347)251-5556
