Amelie A. Wallace Gallery Exhibit: Sharp Objects

Event date: 

Tuesday, October 29, 2019 - 10:30am to Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - 10:30am

Location: 

Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, Campus Center
Exhibit poster showing one work of each featured artist

Description: 

The works of Jackie Branson, Pam Brown, Roxi Marsen, Tmima Z.

Curated by Pam Brown and Stephen Lamia
Exhibit runs from October 29 – November 27, 2019
  • Opening Reception & Artists Talk: October 29, 4-7 p.m.

The Amelie A. Wallace Gallery is pleased to announce “Sharp Objects,” an exhibition featuring works by four contemporary artists who blur the line between sculpture and assemblage.

By their very nature, sharp objects are menacing, threatening, inherently violent, and potentially injurious. In other contexts, however, they can be interpreted as items of empowerment and protection. The artwork featured in this exhibition repurposes saw blades, sheet metal, cutlery, and other ready-mades into intricately assembled sculptures. Meticulously constructed, the works convey the duality of the sensual and the sinister, the nostalgic and the nuanced. The pieces—personal in nature and sexualized in form—reflect larger sociological, political, and historical issues. Strongly influenced by the Feminist Movement, these artists employ the traditions of craftivism alongside non-traditional methods of fabrication and construction. 

About the Artists

The art in this exhibition offers an important dialog about the nature of assemblage vis-à-vis sculpture in the 21st century. These artists collect, appropriate, and redefine the “art object” through remixing materials in a manner analogous to language. Ultimately telling stories through symbolic meaning, their seemingly random constructions become signifiers of an alchemical transformation that lies somewhere between sculpture and assemblage.

  • Jackie Branson constructs personalized non-traditional armor that reflects the ethnicity of her Armenian heritage. Her retro-vision includes symbols of domesticity, vulnerability, and femininity.
  • Pam Brown’s sculptures focus on wildlife and American history. Her artwork is defined by a deliberate, painstaking approach that is evocative of craft traditions and domestic labor. She takes these gendered practices into new contexts to develop them as signifying corporal and emblematic elements.
  • Roxi Marsen intuitively repurposes found objects, piecing together disparate elements in precise manner by soaking them in acidic solutions that abrade their surfaces to create synergistic sculptures.
  • Tmima Z advocates fluctuation and originality, as she never creates the same piece twice. Her artwork reflects themes of war, religion, loss, abuse, survival, and memory.

Gallery Hours: 

Mondays – Thursdays,  12 – 5 p.m. , and by appointment 

 Location: 

Campus Center, Main Level
SUNY College at Old Westbury
Route 107, Old Westbury, NY 11568 

Directions: 

Long Island Expressway to exit 41N; 107N to the main gate of SUNY College at Old Westbury; turn left and follow the signs to Campus Center; go downstairs to Gallery on the main level. 

The Gallery was formally dedicated to Amelie A. Wallace of Garden City on May 22, 1979. The late Mrs. Wallace, a member of the Old Westbury College Council from 1974 to 1980, was honored for her unflagging interest in the College and the State University as well as support of the arts at Old Westbury.