SOL'SAX
and Zoe Pettijohn
January 7th–
February 3rd, 2004
Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 7, 6
- 8pm
Kenny Schachter conTEMPorary
14 Charles Lane, New York NY 10014
T 212 807 6669 F 212 645 0703
schachter@mindspring.com www.rovetv.net
HOURS: Tues-Sat 10 am – 6 pm, Sun 11
am-6 pm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
SOL’SAX: Chain
Link Theory Series
Kenny Schachter conTEMPorary
proudly presents the “Chain Link Theory
Series,” a collection of recent works
by Brooklyn-based artist, SOL’SAX.
SOL’SAX received his
BFA from the Cooper Union in 1992. As a Phillip
Morris Fellow, he received his MFA from Yale
University in 1995. Since 1991, he has had
9 solo shows and has been included in 27 group
shows.
Chain link in its many forms
serves as the physical and symbolic fodder
for SOL’SAX’s latest series. In
works that defy categorization, the viewer
is confronted with his concepts of the chain
link as a D-fence and an O-fence, and one
sees him working through what he calls the
You’re-a-peon and A-free-kin mentalities
apparent in our culture. Chain link surrounds
lots for sale, basketball courts, prison yards,
and schoolyards. It keeps people in and it
keeps people out. It means segregation, but
also solidarity. It’s the real bonds
of slavery and the metaphysical linkage between
peoples. Iron, gold, new, and old. It’s
the bling-bling of chain link jewelry and
the clink-clink of the chain gang.
ZOE PETTIJOHN: Repeating
Landscapes and Patterned Sieves
On view in the upstairs space
are a number of recent works by Zoe Pettijohn.
Pettijohn received her BFA
from Cooper Union in 1995 and she has been
included in 11 group shows over the last three
years. Between “Painted Repeats,”
at the Arts Club of Washington and an upcoming
show at Mixed Greens, conTEMPorary is pleased
to host her second solo exhibition.
“Repeating Landscapes
and Patterned Sieves” refers to two
related series of gouaches. One fabric piece
is included as well. In the former series,
“landscapes are worked into a repeating
frame that evokes the tendency to freeze and
replay a small clip of memory.” Thus,
at the periphery of each singular image are
the beginnings of its repeat. In what resemble
extraordinary swathes of wallpaper, patterned
fabric, or microfilm, the gaze is frozen scuttling
between similar images. The large fabric piece
is based on the smaller “Las Vegas Repeat.”
Ironed together with a fabric fixative are
hundreds and hundreds of bits of fabric, creating
a slightly offset, slightly translucent, but
beautifully lush facsimile of the City of
Sin.
The “Patterned Sieves”
employ “weaving structures to knit two
to three images together, suggesting the way
related memories are stored in the mind.”
Common fabric patterns imbued with Pettijohn’s
personal photographs are painstakingly woven
together in gouache. They repeat like the
landscapes yet they are more complex and pleasurably
disorienting.
Textiles have a great historical
and textual significance for Pettijohn, but
the formal conventions of fabric production
are incorporated into her work as well. As
she states, “the works are all designed
to be produced as printed fabric, already
separated into the standard 12 colors.”
For Pettijohn, it seems the practical can
be beautiful, but the beautiful should be
practical as well.
—Benjamin Berlow
