Hiding in Plain Sight: New Work by Amy Butowicz
press release
Amy Butowicz
January 4-February 20, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday January 4, 6-9pm
“Through a lexicon of painted soft sculptures, salvaged furniture and objects referencing the hand-made, my work explores the absurdity of life through a lens of theatricality. My cast of characters are humanized with both physicality and interiority. The work’s haptic sensibility creates an oscillation between tangible object and metaphysical presence.” – Amy Butowicz
Underdonk is pleased to present ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’, a solo exhibition of recent works by New York based artist Amy Butowicz. In a selection of recent floor-mounted and wall hanging sculptures, the exhibition showcases the evolution and development of Butowicz’s sculptural vocabulary. Butowicz’s language is one that integrates the bodily associations that we have with our built environment – the curvilinear leg of a chair for instance – with an invented and highly sensual biomorphic abstraction.
The resulting forms delight in that physical joining – the act of combining – rather than hiding or smoothing over the integration. They can be rough, evoking cement work or carpentry. They are absurd, proposing packing or assembly; and sensual, offering the body’s intimate processes, through bedding or upholstery. Lastly they are witty, advocating for the objects’ self-awareness and humor as they exist in the world. The artists’ work is then further expanded by the arrangements of a selection of works into an integrated installation that eschews a temporal moment. Here, the artist evokes and delights in the overlap of the realms of theater, set, linguistic, painterly, display, and craft.
This is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition, and second solo exhibition in New York City. Butowicz is a recent (2018) graduate of the Hunter MFA program, and earned a BA from the University of Colorado. Butowicz has attended residencies and exhibited widely in the United States: at Hunter College 68th Street Gallery in NY, Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass CO, Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder CO, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond VA, Vermont Studio Center in Johnson VT, and Salem Art Works in Salem NY.
1329 Willoughby Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11237
Gallery Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 1-6 pm
