 Larissa Nowicki: Private view: |
| Ayn Rand: Art is tied to man's survival, not to his physical survival but to that on which his physical survival depends: to the preservation and survival of his consciousness. (The Romantic Manifesto, p.4) Man & Eve are pleased to present 'In Waiting', an exhibition of new work by Larissa Nowicki. Nowicki's sculptures and weavings are formed from the printed pages of books, sliced and intricately woven to form new works that cannot be read in the traditional sense. Words are broken down, their letters spliced to create new sentences and letter forms, revealing fragments of public and private histories. Nowicki's works, with their loosely assembled grids and reductive forms invoke the vocabulary of minimalism, but originate from her personal and emotional experiences. For her first London solo show, Nowicki fills the gallery space with woven works and sculptural forms. Clusters of cocoon like structures, formed from tightly rolled strips of printed paper, are suspended from the ceiling. Nowicki's sculptures are organic and disorderly, referencing the physical and bodily at an almost cellular level, through their imperfections and inconsistencies. Their irregularities mirror the imperfect underside of her woven works, as much a part of their make up as their precise and uniform fronts, but which are hidden from view. The fragments of type and images used by Nowicki in her textual pieces imply the process of thought, reason and receiving of information. Her densely woven grids of letters and words are punctuated randomly by blank squares, empty of print and highlighted- silent and reflective moments within the noise of daily thought. Exhibited alongside her sculptures and woven textual works is a series of drawings constructed from the unprinted margins of art books. The delicate thin strips of paper are woven to create a canvas on top of which Nowicki draws hundreds of dots, formed within the grid of the weave. Nowicki trades upon the vulnerability of her material. The thin strips of shredded paper are delicate, but once densely woven together have all the resilience of a piece of fabric. Nowicki's meticulously crafted pieces invite reflection on the processes and material of cultural production, being at the same time both delicate and tenacious. These are works which finely balance their contradictions - order with disorder, imperfection with precision and stability and control within moments of complete vulnerability. Larissa Nowicki studied at the Royal College of Art and RISD and lives and works in New York and London. Recent exhibitions include 'Illiterature', Frumkin Gallery, Santa Monica, CA USA (2009), '8 1/2 x 11 / A4' at James Fuentes Gallery, NY USA (2008), 'RISD NYC Biennial' 2008, Brooklyn, NY (2008), 'Paper-thin Worlds', group show, Man&Eve, London, UK (2007). Opening hours: Thursday - Saturday, 12 - 6pm and at other times by prior appointment. |
| Man&Eve |
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