Arlene Shechet:

Here and There

Arlene Shechet: Here and There presented a new series of brilliantly constructed and multi-dimensional castpaper works that blur the line between drawing and sculpture by New York-based artist Arlene Shechet. In addition, Shechet exhibited a group of digitally-carved, small wood sculptures of the Rocky Mountains as scholars’ rocks with large felt ‘drapes’ whose imagery specifically references MCA Denver's building.

In this work, as in the sculpture for which she is known, Shechet continues to mine the territory between East and West, ancient and modern, sacred and secular, representation and abstraction, the decorative and the fine arts. As the title Here and There suggests, these works are all windows into a sense of place: from the mountains outside to the plans for the museum itself to the constructed imaginings of the cast-paper reliefs. Shechet created her paper collages by pouring liquid pulp into molds that each reproduce the topography of a single moment on the surface of turbulent waters. While the paper was still in a fluid state, the artist captured this moment by embedding a personal and historical (nineteenth century Japanese katagami) vocabulary of images into the liquid pulp. Executed in a rich palette of blues and browns, the finished works reference eighteenth century Japanese azure woodblock prints and Asian blue-and-white textiles and ceramics. Together with the scholars’ rocks and ‘drapes,’ the works invite contemplation. The paper draws the viewer in as its complexity becomes clear while the accompanying works encourage reflection on the immediate surroundings.

Arlene Shechet was born in 1951 in New York, New York where she currently lives and works. Her work is held in many distinguished public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum; CCS Bard Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; The Jewish Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.