Conceptually, tension unites the works in Off-Kilter. Be it growing old, natural disaster, or simply the choice to move away from the art historical canon—which, is still an active choice rather than a passive action. While formally asymmetrical shapes and the odd placement reflect the exhibition’s title: off balance or unconventional. A deflated black balloon encased in resin—latex-like—by Lesley Bodzy sits atop a ledge, way above the reach of any visitor, and is both sleek and disfigured.
Debbi Kenote’s wall works inventively merge craft practices and patterning with a nod to the Pattern and Decoration Movement and its postmodernist collaging of inspirations from decorative arts and design sources. Funi, which centers the show as it is hung on the gallery's short side wall, is comprised of a canvas shaped like a folded paper creating trigon-shaped edges—origami, or quilting come to mind. On the canvas, Kenote has painted shapes and the overall vibe is giving a cut-out from a distorted pattern. While Lupine incorporates steel hinges—more common to woodworking practices than painting—allowing parts of the canvas to open and close. In the 1970s and 80s, a group of United States-based artists incorporated elements from decorative arts, design, and material culture in their artistic practice: Pattern and Decoration Movement. Breaking hierarchical boundaries between fine art and material culture, Miriam Schapiro worked with doilies while Valerie Joudon’s intricate paintings borrowed from Celtic or Islamic patterns. Although MFA programs have shifted away from medium-specific hierarchies in their programs, the realms of craft, design, and art are still separated. Kenote’s pieces are whimsical and honorific and the artist has, with joy, decided to explore the history of craft rather than of painting.
Debbi Kenote. Courtesy of 5-50 Gallery.
Although Ann Marie Auricchio’s canvases are sculptural, Lesley Bodzy is the defacto sculptor out of the group and it is with them that Abigail Knight, the exhibition’s curator, has hung Bodzy’s pieces off-kilter, which lends itself well to the work. Recurrent Ambivalence, a balloon hanging overhead by a chain, “wears” a hairnet. Here, the skin of the balloon becomes a stand-in for human skin—our largest organ that we must protect, preserve, show, or conceal, depending on our circumstances. The combination of materials balloon, hairnet, chain, and resin—which preserves its shape is both humorous and dark. Can injections and bedazzling recreate youth? Two works FOGO XI and XIII (fear of getting old) are deflated and sagging and seem to say no. However, Bodzy’s unshapely balloons in popping colors are beautiful in their current state. Plastic surgery has become increasingly more accessible and fueled by with selfie-, social media-, and wellness culture people increasingly want to make use of it. People remain active and visible in the public sphere for longer. Stuck in a Warhol-esque loop, social media users are constantly living their 15 minutes of fame—seeing themselves and others. Bodzy’s work ignites conversations on augmentation, beauty, and aging with ambitious material exploration that, in a sense, reflects the inventiveness and ambiguities of the beauty industry itself.
Lesley Bodzy. Courtesy of 5-50 Gallery.
A New Orleans local, Auricchio skipped New York City nearly a decade ago and now works from a studio overlooking the Mississippi River. As we conversed during the opening, she explained that nature is integral to her everyday life—citing regular walks in surrounding swampy, wooded, and field-filled landscapes. In her sculptural paintings on view at 5-50, she merges her past artistic practice with snapshots from her contemporary life. She photocopies images of her paintings, prints photographs she has taken of the landscape, tapes them up on the wall and pulls them down, cuts parts out, and collages them together in studies. One of these collage studies, On The Lip of a Storm #3, is on view in the backroom. Thereafter, she recreates the image in acrylic and oil on cut canvas that she mounts on a dibond panel—her energetic mark-making extends to the shaping of the canvas. New Orleans frequently experiences heavy storms, hurricanes, and flooding. With snaking streaks and strokes forming the edges of the canvas, her titles allude to resistance, or being on the brink of change—Blood From a Stone, for instance. Merging images from her archive with that of an unyielding nature might perhaps be reflective of a strength she sees in her work.
In her previous exhibition, Phantasmagoria at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, curator Knight borrowed from a practice of horror storytelling. In Off-Kilter storytelling is also central. Perhaps this will be a signature for the curator—to show material and technique-driven abstract work that also investigates real and sometimes uneasy realities. WM
Off-Kilter featuring Lesley Bodzy, Ann Marie Auricchio, and Debbi Kenote is curated by Abigail Knight and is open January 11th - February 23rd, 2025, at 5-50 Gallery, Long Island City.
