Donna Nield
Circluator
March 22 – April 20, 2002
De Chiara Gallery
521 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
t.212.967.6007
office@dechiaragallery.com
Opening: Friday, March 22, 6 – 8 p.m.
Snow Tunnel, 2001. Cibachrome mounted on aluminum, 50″ x 50″.
De Chiara Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Circulator, a solo exhibition of new work by New York-based Canadian artist Donna Nield. The exhibition creates an elusive and whimsical dialogue between public nature and composed architecture.
Snow Tunnel, a photograph of a tunnel Nield dug in the snow, creates a pathway that leads anywhere. The raw material of nature is shaped by the artist to form a ludicrously pure gesture — an infinite tunnel. The photograph oscillates between two and three dimensions, between permanence and the ephemeral.
Playing with geometric forms and modern aesthetics, the 12 sections of Modular Tunnel can be arranged and rearranged to create multiple aboveground pathways. Designed to form a closed unit when placed in a circular configuration, Modular Tunnel can also be reconfigured to create a tunnel-path that can be entered by the viewer. Here the tunnel takes the viewer on a disorienting trip through the gallery.
The idea of circular travel continues in Whole World, a video that goes on an abstract looping trip around an idealized grassy surface of the earth. On a journey that goes nowhere and everywhere, the earth is objectified into a distilled surface with no entrance or exit.
Nields Potted Trees are full-scale foam models of the large potted trees found in public/corporate spaces. On a giant scale within the gallery space, these soft white sculptures seem ghost-like and looming. Awkwardly crammed into the gallery space, these normally invisible objects become provocatively present.
For more information go to: www.e-flux.com/site2002/index.phtml?client=welcome/dechiara