VANITAS: DAVID BASKIN, ANGELO FILOMENO, JUDE GRIEBEL, NIR HOD, TAMARA KOSTIANOVSKY, STUART LANTRY, GRACELEE LAWRENCE, JENNIE JIEUN LEE, TONY MATELLI, ROSE NESTLER, WHITNEY OLDENBURG, ZACK RAFULS, WILL RYMAN, STEPHANIE H. SHIH, AND YI XIN TONG

CHART and R & R are pleased to present Vanitas, a group exhibition featuring sculptural works that explore classical notions of transience and mortality, as well as the power of objects to exude symbolic meaning. The jointly-organized exhibition will take place across both venues in Tribeca and Ridgewood.

 

The show’s title references the 16th and 17th-century Dutch painting genre, often expressed as still life paintings, that highlighted the pointlessness of pleasure when death is ultimately unavoidable. While akin to the “memento mori” motif, where skulls and wilting flowers operate as conspicuous reminders of one’s own mortality, works in the vanitas vein can incorporate displays of overt luxury and opluence, expanding the scope to include subjects of consumption and self-indulgence.

 

Riffing on classical symbolism and the cheeky arrangement of objects as metaphorical double agents, the works in Vanitas serve as occasions for mutiple readings; things are—and very much are not—what they seem. There’s a subtle humor in their objecthood, both in subject matter and material rendering, as the pieces stradle the line between singular still life object and allegorical social commentary.

 

Specific works in the show make reference to the natural world to highlight the demise of something larger than ourselves. The organically-shaped sculptures of Whitney Oldenburg, for instance, transform man-made objects into reflections on the implication of mass consumerism in ecological collapse. Tamara Kostianovsky, too, uses fabricated textiles to create felled tree trunks, making it impossible to separate personal connections from the larger symbols of mortality.

 

The exhibition at CHART will showcase more intimately-scaled works by a variety of contemporary artists, while the exhibition at R&R will present wall-mounted and freestanding works of assorted sizes in both indoor and outdoor settings. Works at both locations will range in mediums; from wood to stainless steel to ceramic to fabric, accentuating the variety of ways in which artists have nodded, cheerily or otherwise, to our own inevitable ends.

 

ABOUT  R & R

R & R is an ongoing collaborative programming initiative of CHART (New York) and Marvin Gardens (Ridgewood, Queens). Located at 1548 Decatur Street, adjacent to Marvin Gardens, R & R will present a series of outdoor sculpture exhibitions, providing a platform for artists whose main practice is working with three-dimensional form or installation. Gallery hours are Sundays, 1-5 pm and by appointment.