Upcoming:
+Pulse Art Fair - Solo Booth with Denny Gallery
May 9 - 12
The Metropolitan Pavilion
125 W. 18th St
+Same Same but Different at Guest Spot Gallery in Baltimore
April 13 - May 18
Reception April 13
1715 N. Calvert St
+Floater at BravinLee Project
Artist Include: Clint Jukkala, Alexander Kroll, Evan Nesbit, Erik Olson, Eric Sall, Amanda Valdez
May 22 - June 28
Opening Reception May 22 6-8
526 W. 26th St
+Review of Taste of Us @ Denny Gallery on Idiom Magazine
(Click through in link section)
+ Review of Taste of Us @ Denny Gallery on Dossier Journal
(Click through in link section)
Amanda Valdez’s current body of work are colorful, multimedia works, populated by shapes that oscillate between representation and abstraction. The works have a very strong physicality, immediacy, and sense of embodiment. Various materials- embroidery, acrylic paint, fabric and canvas- are sewn together to become continuous, integral elements of the work. Sewn elements are not delicate. Fabric and stitches do not cede to painted elements, and the overall effect is one of materials acting out, asserting themselves in the process of making. Yet the final work gives a sense of holistic embodiment, wrangled from the potential anxiety of fragmentation.
Amanda Valdez is a Brooklyn based artist, born in Seattle, Washington. She received her MFA from Hunter College in New York City and BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited in El Regreso de los Dinosaurios at the Abrons Art Center in New York City, Same Same But Different at SOIL in Seattle, MsBehavior at the ArtBridge Drawing Room in New York City, The Return to Rattlesnake Mountain at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, New York, Faraway Neighbor at Flux Factory in Queens, Don’t Fence Me In…Or Out at Lesley Heller Workspace in New York City. Valdez has been the recipient of a Yaddo Artist-in-Residency, MacDowell Colony Artist-in-Residency, the 2011 College Art Association MFA Professional-Development Fellowship, and is a contributing arts editor at Dossier Journal and Bomb Magazine.
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I think about what the body feels: extreme pleasure and pain. There is pain in the pleasure of having intimate physical contact with another. These brief moments are always book ended with being alone, connections are brief and the rip from them or their dissolution is sobering and sad. This often ignites a full relocation of reality, because reality is shifting on us constantly, causing our bodies to respond to our emotional life. In my paintings I can make something whole- it can all be there- the light, the joy, and the seduction, but there is always a lurking moment to see beyond the wholeness, into the anxiety of fragmentation. The paradox of the co-existing pleasure and pain highlights my interest in paradoxes in general, and how they’re productive locations for me to work with. By the body losing containment for example, ridding itself of poison by ejecting it through it’s orphuses, the mouth or anus, the body can then become healthy and whole again. These are ruptures and they happen in many ways. Sexuality is contained within the body until a moment of feral rapture and we spill out. It’s a physical moment and psychic one. I’m thinking about how my experience oscillates between the two, how a feeling comes from the inside out or how it’s effected from the outside in and the skin is the barrier and surface between these.
+Pulse Art Fair - Solo Booth with Denny Gallery
May 9 - 12
The Metropolitan Pavilion
125 W. 18th St
+Same Same but Different at Guest Spot Gallery in Baltimore
April 13 - May 18
Reception April 13
1715 N. Calvert St
+Floater at BravinLee Project
Artist Include: Clint Jukkala, Alexander Kroll, Evan Nesbit, Erik Olson, Eric Sall, Amanda Valdez
May 22 - June 28
Opening Reception May 22 6-8
526 W. 26th St
+Review of Taste of Us @ Denny Gallery on Idiom Magazine
(Click through in link section)
+ Review of Taste of Us @ Denny Gallery on Dossier Journal
(Click through in link section)
Amanda Valdez’s current body of work are colorful, multimedia works, populated by shapes that oscillate between representation and abstraction. The works have a very strong physicality, immediacy, and sense of embodiment. Various materials- embroidery, acrylic paint, fabric and canvas- are sewn together to become continuous, integral elements of the work. Sewn elements are not delicate. Fabric and stitches do not cede to painted elements, and the overall effect is one of materials acting out, asserting themselves in the process of making. Yet the final work gives a sense of holistic embodiment, wrangled from the potential anxiety of fragmentation.
Amanda Valdez is a Brooklyn based artist, born in Seattle, Washington. She received her MFA from Hunter College in New York City and BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited in El Regreso de los Dinosaurios at the Abrons Art Center in New York City, Same Same But Different at SOIL in Seattle, MsBehavior at the ArtBridge Drawing Room in New York City, The Return to Rattlesnake Mountain at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, New York, Faraway Neighbor at Flux Factory in Queens, Don’t Fence Me In…Or Out at Lesley Heller Workspace in New York City. Valdez has been the recipient of a Yaddo Artist-in-Residency, MacDowell Colony Artist-in-Residency, the 2011 College Art Association MFA Professional-Development Fellowship, and is a contributing arts editor at Dossier Journal and Bomb Magazine.
____________________________________________________________
I think about what the body feels: extreme pleasure and pain. There is pain in the pleasure of having intimate physical contact with another. These brief moments are always book ended with being alone, connections are brief and the rip from them or their dissolution is sobering and sad. This often ignites a full relocation of reality, because reality is shifting on us constantly, causing our bodies to respond to our emotional life. In my paintings I can make something whole- it can all be there- the light, the joy, and the seduction, but there is always a lurking moment to see beyond the wholeness, into the anxiety of fragmentation. The paradox of the co-existing pleasure and pain highlights my interest in paradoxes in general, and how they’re productive locations for me to work with. By the body losing containment for example, ridding itself of poison by ejecting it through it’s orphuses, the mouth or anus, the body can then become healthy and whole again. These are ruptures and they happen in many ways. Sexuality is contained within the body until a moment of feral rapture and we spill out. It’s a physical moment and psychic one. I’m thinking about how my experience oscillates between the two, how a feeling comes from the inside out or how it’s effected from the outside in and the skin is the barrier and surface between these.
