Underdonk

press release

January 8th – February 13th 2022
Closing Reception: Saturday, February 12th, 5-8PM

Saturdays + Sundays 1-6PM

Curated by Liz Ainslie

Net is an exhibition that brings together two artists who use systems of repetition as a cohesive element against chaos. Sarah McDougald Kohn and Lauren Collings practice experimentation to hover in the unwieldy realm of the organic. Both artists rein it in by incorporating repetition: whether it is chains and braids or stripes and dots, the pattern acts like a net: containing the amorphous field as parts poke out through the holes.

Sarah McDougald Kohn’s sculptures borrow methods of textile production and craft to examine objects with complex histories: chains, braids, and nets. These elements all exemplify the way a single gesture, object, or component can be wholly transformed through its repetition or grouping. “Much of this work stems from a project I called Boards and Braids. In each sculpture, I explore what can be done with a piece of wood and an element of line. By using methods of repetition, the process of making each piece is intrinsic to the resulting product. The pieces feel like drawings to me, the unpredictable residual products of shapes and lines.”

Lauren Collings’s background in life drawing influences the abstract paintings she creates today. Her fascination with science and the natural world drives the experimental approach she takes to oil painting. “With this new body of work I made drawings into paintings so that I could trap a special kind of light inside the edges of the canvas. A slim rind of paint forms and encrusts over little goosebumps, sometimes sparking into a flame that gurgles between the brush tips until it’s all over.”

McDougald Kohn and Collings both bring playfulness and a sense of humor to their work. Each lively form seems to take on a character. Extrusions and protrusions become corporeal and amorphous giving way to an uncanny familiarity.

Sarah McDougald Kohn received her MFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art (Temple University) in 2006 after having participated in their Rome Art and Culture Summer Program. Since then, her work has been included in group shows at various spaces—some traditionally commercial and some alternative or artist-run—in and around New York City. Including, but not limited to, 303 Gallery, Davidson Contemporary, Rooster Gallery, The Wassaic Project, and most recently Underdonk.

Lauren Collings was born in 1981 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. She received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003 and her MFA from the New York Studio School in 2009. In the summer of 2013 she was an artist-in-residence at the BAU Institute, Otranto, Italy and in the fall of 2013 she was an artist-in-residence at the Wassaic Project, Wassaic, New York. She has had solo exhibitions at The Gallery@1GAP, Richard Meier on Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York and at the Lynchburg College Daura Gallery, Lynchburg, Virginia. Her work has been exhibited in New York City at Brian Morris Gallery, Valentine Gallery, Parallel Art Space, and Orgy Park; in Upstate New York at the Wassaic Project; in Philadelphia at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and Blythe Gallery at the Imperial College London, England. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn. She lives and works in Brooklyn and Columbiaville, New York.

Underdonk
1329 Willoughby Ave #211
Brooklyn, NY 11237
L train to Jefferson St
[email protected]
Hours: Open Saturdays and Sundays 1-6 PM