Existing comment:
FINDING A PATH
EMILIE BRZEZINSKI AND DALYA LUTTWAK: A CONVERSATION
CURATED BY ANETA GEORGIEVSKA-SHINE
Emilie Benes Brzezinski and Dalya Luttwak are Washington-based sculptors whose personal histories, as well as artistic paths, have numerous points of contact. Brzezinski has been using wood as a medium and a subject for decades towards ever more ambitious sculptural statements. What unifies these statements is her bold handling of the material, often- times with tools such as a chainsaw, and her single-minded focus on the relationship between the artist's hand and that of nature. Luttwak's artistic idiom has been shaped by a similar concern with the relationship between what nature shows of itself, and what remains lurking within its folds. In this pursuit, she has focused on an essential, yet often concealed part of plant anatomy: their root systems. Closely attending to plant morphology, she crafts complex metal structures that bring those concealed facets of nature into visibility.
Both artists create works that are site-specific and site-responsive. What makes this exhibition unique, however, is their engagement not only with the museum spaces, but with each other. For the past year, they have been meeting in their studios and discussing their sculptures with a single goal of bringing them together into a meaningful conversation. The results of these exchanges are five dialogical groups: Cedars and Vines, High Point, Split Open, Mother Earth, and Resilience. Rather than composites or juxtapositions, these creations are intended to be understood as a dynamic interplay of two personal and artistic sensibilities.
In their respective pursuits of these hidden patterns in the world-forest, Brzezinski and Luttwak have consistently tried to make them more visible to themselves and others. With this exhibition, they are also striving to do that by learning from one another, as two creative individuals who keep grappling with symbols whose meanings can never be fully known or re- covered.
Aneta Georgievska-Shine
Curator |