Krysten Cunningham: Trapezoid, Prism, Cube
May 2 - Jul 2, 2014
Krysten Cunningham: Trapezoid, Prism, Cube
Image
Krysten Cunningham
Gold Trapezoid, 2014
Hand-dyed jute and nails
300 x 250 x 20 cm

Krysten Cunningham: Trapezoid, Prism, Cube

Ritter/Zamet is pleased to present the third solo exhibition at the gallery of Los Angeles-based artist Krysten Cunningham. 

This will include three site-related examples of her new series of large-scale, wall-based reliefs – a gold trapezoid, a blue prism, a green cube - inspired by Sol Lewitt’s renowned isometric projections of forms drawn out of geometric shapes. Using a precise, painstaking process of winding hand-dyed jute string around a frame of wall-mounted nails, Cunningham creates the illusion of spatial perspective and recession, suggesting volume without contradicting the flatness of the wall behind.  Cunningham explains that, 

“It's amazing how a line can define space so elegantly and minimally. I think our eyes are very accustomed to tracking lines in space. We don't need that much information to compete a shape in our mind. I like the repetition and progression of these lines. Its like I was drawing out the frequency of a light wave, or a sound wave. But I also like that half of the shape is dependent on your mind completing it.” 

Not quite drawing and not quite sculpture, these pieces exist somewhere in the space between the two disciplines. The jute material is concrete and tangible. It has edges and mass, it is unwieldy and embedded with organic matter. Cunningham wants the shapes to be grounded in reality and not just floating as meditative symbols or pure abstractions. By leaving the excess string attached and hanging down to a ball on the floor, Cunningham anchors the work out of the sacrosanct plane of the wall and imparts a sense of transience – the viewer can trace the progression from beginning to end and back again.

Alongside, Cunningham will show three works on paper that correlate directly with the wall works. Functioning as belated blueprints, these coloured graphite pieces highlight the negative space created by their 3-dimensional relatives - thus subtly reflecting our ever-shifting experience of seeing and perceiving.

Krysten Cunningham, (b. 1973) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from University of California, Los Angeles (2003) and a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (2000). She has had solo exhibitions at the Pomona College Museum of Art (cat.); the Thomas Solomon Gallery, Los Angeles; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf; and Ritter/Zamet Gallery, London. Her work has been featured in many group exhibitions including “Craft Tech/Coded Media” at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (2013); “Undone, Making and Unmaking in Contemporary Sculpture" at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK (2010); "Beyond Measure" at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, UK (2008); and "THING: New Sculpture from Los Angeles" UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2005) among numerous others in the US, Germany, Switzerland and England.