Underdonk

Sarah Anderson, Cara Chan, Grayson Cox, and Alison Kudlow arrived in India this past January having never before met. What they had in common, aside from all being US-based sculptors, is that they had all briefly intersected with artist and curator Lara Saget. Perhaps, more importantly, they were all game to fly to Delhi, hop on a domestic flight to a small town they’d never heard of, and then drive three hours to a tiny village to spend two weeks at an artist residency about which they knew very little.

Tired and wide-eyed from travel, they convened at Art Ichol, alongside Lara and video documentarian Max Grey. There they discovered a verdant arts complex which included large shared workspaces, spacious individual sleeping accommodations, and a lounge where they would enjoy three freshly prepared meals together each day. They were asked to each create a large-scale sculpture that would live permanently on the grounds.

Art Ichol provided the artists with materials–including bronze, large pieces of black marble, sandstone, and limestone, wood, and ceramic–and a team of skilled assistants to create the work they would leave behind. For these artists, such limitless possibility was a novel experience–initial disbelief faded into ecstatic joy as they each honed in on a plan. They knew that completing their ambitious projects in two weeks was a tight timeline, one that did not allow for indecision, false starts, or significant down time.

A specific kinship formed among the group, played out in late night makeshift Karaoke singing and early morning reports of strange dreams and restless doubts about their works-in-progress. They built their sculptures side-by-side, eyes on each other’s work as they helped one another solve problems or answer questions. Tools were shared, material skills consulted, and conceptual overlap discussed. As the artists engaged with one another, so did their works. They watched each other during the most intimate of processes–taking large scale risks in a place that felt a world apart from their everyday.

In this exhibition the artists present works that germinated in India and then were completed upon return home.

Sarah Anderson is a Brooklyn-based artist. Hijacking systems like minimalism and museology, and deploying the techniques of traditional crafts, her work tells stories about the resistance and oppression of desiring bodies in their encounter with the often hostile world around them. She holds a BFA in Glass from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. She has attended residencies internationally, including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Maine), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace (New York), A.I.R. (Brooklyn), KinoSaito Arts Center (New York), Mana Contemporary BSMT (Jersey City), La Escuelita (Nicaragua), and CanSerrat (Barcelona). Her work has been exhibited at galleries institutions such as LaMama Galleria, Abrons Art Center, The Wallach Gallery at Columbia University, NURTUREart, Helena Anrather Gallery, A.I.R, Signs & Symbols, and Vox Populi.

Grayson Cox is a New York City based artist working in a variety of media, from painting and printmaking to photography and furniture-like sculpture. He holds a BFA from Indiana University and a Masters of Fine Art from Columbia University. Grayson is the recipient of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Artistic innovation and collaboration grant, National Society of Arts & Letters Career Award, the Daisy Soros Prize, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Residency. He has exhibited in New York and internationally including the Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland; Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Tel Aviv, Israel; The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; The New Museum, New York; Elizabeth Foundation, New York; The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, NY; and the Sculpture Center in Queens, NY. Grayson is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Cara Chan’s hand-carved stone sculptures employ pareidoliac and apotropaic techniques found globally and throughout history. Her light touch conceals a deep well of reverence for human relationships and earthly materials. Chan was born in New Jersey and received a MFA in Sculpture from University of California, Los Angeles along with a BFA in Fine Art from New York University. She lives and works in LA.

Alison Kudlow captures material in mid-motion, resulting in sculptures best described with verbs. She explores the slipperiness of categories, producing bodily ceramic sculptures that simultaneously resemble fruits, geodes, and undersea creatures. The sculptures suggest a fuzziness between human and human-made, plant and mineral, troubling categorization and connoting infinite fluid possibilities. Kudlow lives and works in Brooklyn. She earned a BA from the University of Southern California, a post-baccalaureate degree from Brandeis University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Studio Art. She has shown at numerous New York galleries including Deanna Evans Projects, Field Projects, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Flux Factory, UrbanGlass, Doppelgänger Projects, and Paradice Palase, as well as significant shows at Fullerton College in California, and Wavelength Space in Chattanooga, TN. She presented her first NYC solo show, Meaningful Rituals in Irrational Times, at Elijah Wheat Showroom in 2019.

Lara Saget’s work makes materially visible the limitations of logic. Her practice is fueled by the belief that facts are not absolute. She merges seemingly disparate materials including stone and bronze and marble and glass, when heated to the same degree, the materials co-habitate; the separation between them is circumstantial. Saget lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University and her MFA in Fine Arts from New York University. Her work has been exhibited in the US and abroad in varied spaces including Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Washington; Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, Texas; Gallery of the Faculty of Arts, Pristina, Kosovo; Art Ichol, Maihar, India;

Fortnight Institute, New York, NY; 80 Washington Square East Gallery, New York, New York; Studio 106, Los Angeles, California; THE ROOM Contemporary Art Space, Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello, Venice, Italy; Wells Studio, Paris, France; Peninsula Art Space, Brooklyn, New York; A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, New York; Art Helix, Brooklyn, New York, and more. Residencies include Yucca Valley Material Lab, Yucca Valley, CA; Iris Projects, Venice, CA; Art Ichol Bronze Casting and Stone Carving Residency, Maihar, India; and Center for Contemporary Art with Grzegorz Kowalski and Artur Żmijewski, Warsaw, Poland. She has received grants and awards including the 2022 Tg: Transitions in Kiln-Glass Emerging Artist Award, 2017 New York University MFA Artistic Practice Award, the 2016 Steinhardt Scholarship Award, and the 2017/18 Urban Glass Scholarship Award. Public projects include Public Sculpture for NYC Parks, Clumber Corner, Brooklyn, NY; Public Sculpture, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NY; Art Ichol, Maihar, India; Native Woodland Garden Public Art Project, Schwartz Plaza, Washington Square Park, New York, NY; Collaborative Concepts, Saunders Farm, Garrison, NY; and Collaborative Concepts, Tilly Foster Farm, Putnam County, NY. Lara co-founded Studio 200, an art exhibition collective in which shows curated coincide thematically with workshops, lectures, and installations of various media.

Underdonk

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