Upcoming Exhibitions & Events 2020
normal pop-up curated by Zoe Sasson
Five artists show work in the window of A.P.E. at 126 Main Street.
June 8 - August 17, 2020
Five artists show work in the window of A.P.E. at 126 Main Street.
June 8 - August 17, 2020
Alicia Renadette, July 5 - 18
Artist Statement
Drawing upon the overheated aesthetics of handmade fantasy movie sets, holiday retail displays, and really fancy cakes, my work entices viewers into a hothouse universe that re-examines our relationship with an excessively materialistic world and the traumas it inscribes on bodies and minds.
The common objects and materials meant to bring joy, comfort, consolation, or hygienic order into our lives serve as the raw materials for my sculptural process. Holiday decorations, party favors, sweaters, blankets, and artificial flower arrangements are scavenged from curb-side free piles, thrift stores, and bargain bins and re-incorporated into conglomerate forms ensnared by an overgrowth of wild tendrils. These unruly, organic arrangements of familiar yet disparate materials mirror the complex relationships we have with family, lovers, or perhaps simply our own internal systems of control. By combining an embrace of the grotesque with touches of light-hearted irony, the work articulates a strategy of resilience and humor in the face of internalized societal dysfunction.
Above Image:
"Unseen Forces: Biome Collapse Party", 2019, (detail of larger installation)
Disassembled artificial flowers, toothpicks, cocktail swords and umbrellas, household sponges, styrofoam packaging, window screen, house paint
https://aliciarenadettestudio.com
Artist Statement
Drawing upon the overheated aesthetics of handmade fantasy movie sets, holiday retail displays, and really fancy cakes, my work entices viewers into a hothouse universe that re-examines our relationship with an excessively materialistic world and the traumas it inscribes on bodies and minds.
The common objects and materials meant to bring joy, comfort, consolation, or hygienic order into our lives serve as the raw materials for my sculptural process. Holiday decorations, party favors, sweaters, blankets, and artificial flower arrangements are scavenged from curb-side free piles, thrift stores, and bargain bins and re-incorporated into conglomerate forms ensnared by an overgrowth of wild tendrils. These unruly, organic arrangements of familiar yet disparate materials mirror the complex relationships we have with family, lovers, or perhaps simply our own internal systems of control. By combining an embrace of the grotesque with touches of light-hearted irony, the work articulates a strategy of resilience and humor in the face of internalized societal dysfunction.
Above Image:
"Unseen Forces: Biome Collapse Party", 2019, (detail of larger installation)
Disassembled artificial flowers, toothpicks, cocktail swords and umbrellas, household sponges, styrofoam packaging, window screen, house paint
https://aliciarenadettestudio.com
Zoe Sasson, July 20 - August 3
Artist Bio
Zoe Sasson currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and graduated with an M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2019. Raised in Western Massachusetts, she attended Guilford College in NC where she earned a B.A. in Painting. Sasson is a recipient of the 2020 Local Cultural Council Grant from Northampton Arts Council and the 2020 Capacity-Building Grant from MASS MoCA. In 2019, Sasson participated in the Assets for Artists artist residency at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA and the Baustein Residency in Holyoke, MA.
Artist Statement
In my current paintings, I create imagined spaces wherein characters strive for balance but stumble. My creations take from memories of shapes, colors, and patterns and transform them in a series of trials and errors—material risks and mishaps—until characters emerge, proudly claiming space. As shapes repeat themselves, their personalities become bolder, louder, and noncompliant. Boisterous bodies are embedded within raised surfaces, crevices, and windows, where they can assert themselves, their oddities, and their curiosities.
I give myself permission to paint uninhibited by strains of perfection, taking from a visual language developed during childhood. In this mindset, my paintings channel both awkwardness and unrestricted displays of joy. With an array of layered materials, I transform each shape into hefty masses and mounds of color, jumping between different planes of space, as I reflect upon each form's physical and emotional absurdities.
Above Image
There and back again
Oil paint, fabric, sculptamold and and plastic on canvas
24” x 20”
2019-2020
http://zsasson.com
Artist Bio
Zoe Sasson currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and graduated with an M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2019. Raised in Western Massachusetts, she attended Guilford College in NC where she earned a B.A. in Painting. Sasson is a recipient of the 2020 Local Cultural Council Grant from Northampton Arts Council and the 2020 Capacity-Building Grant from MASS MoCA. In 2019, Sasson participated in the Assets for Artists artist residency at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA and the Baustein Residency in Holyoke, MA.
Artist Statement
In my current paintings, I create imagined spaces wherein characters strive for balance but stumble. My creations take from memories of shapes, colors, and patterns and transform them in a series of trials and errors—material risks and mishaps—until characters emerge, proudly claiming space. As shapes repeat themselves, their personalities become bolder, louder, and noncompliant. Boisterous bodies are embedded within raised surfaces, crevices, and windows, where they can assert themselves, their oddities, and their curiosities.
I give myself permission to paint uninhibited by strains of perfection, taking from a visual language developed during childhood. In this mindset, my paintings channel both awkwardness and unrestricted displays of joy. With an array of layered materials, I transform each shape into hefty masses and mounds of color, jumping between different planes of space, as I reflect upon each form's physical and emotional absurdities.
Above Image
There and back again
Oil paint, fabric, sculptamold and and plastic on canvas
24” x 20”
2019-2020
http://zsasson.com
Roberley Bell, August 3 - 17
BIO
Roberley Bell’s artistic work is inspired by nature and time. Her practice draws on the world around her, in particular the scrutiny of nature and the built environment. She spent her childhood in Latin America and Southeast Asia and holds an MFA from SUNY - Alfred. She is the recipient of many fellowships including the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Pollock Krasner Fellowship, and a Senior Scholar Fulbright to Turkey. Her Fulbright project The City as The Site of Intervention resulted in a series of projects in public spaces. Currently, a Fulbright specialist leading walking workshops internationally; recent workshops have been held in Sharjah, UAE, Istanbul, Turkey and Malmö, Sweden. She has also received several residency awards, both nationally and internationally, including Sculpture Space and the International Studio Program. Internationally she has had residencies at the CITE International, Paris and the Stadt künstlerhaus, Salzburg, Austria where she completed the book A Borrowed View, and the National Center for Contemporary Art, Kaliningrad, Russia. Do you Know this Tree? Was published by Visual Studies Workshop in 2018. Bell’s work has been exhibited internationally. She has completed numerous public projects.
Artist statement:
My work centers on the production of sculpture and site-specific public projects. Inspired by nature and rooted in the art historical tradition of organic abstraction. My work both abstracts and borrows from the natural world to reveal hybridized forms. My compositions juxtapose altered commonplace objects, with handmade sculptural forms. My process of making is closely linked to a way of thinking and seeing and reflecting on the world around. Essentially as a sculptor, I am continuously in search of form. A process I refer to as finding form - inventing form where it did not previously exist. Principle to my practice are the acts of drawing and modeling. From there I move to refine the forms that then become the anchor of my compositions. I work with a wide range of materials, wood, glass, plaster, ceramic, steel to reveal in each form the essence of materiality and the ability for distinct materials to be emotive communicators. It is both the combinations of materials and their inherent properties that I explore in my work. Seeing potential in unexpected ways. There is a palpable spontaneity inherent in these works-a quirkily liveliness, they are delicate amalgams of many media, thoughtfully constructed and balanced. My sculptures are embedded in the formal language of spatial composition. Color, contrasting material textures and distinctive form are the dominate features in the work. My sculptures straddle the space between representation and abstraction.
Above Image
Still life with antler
Wood, steel, resin cast, plaster, antler, clay
47 x9 x9x inches
2018
Photo credit Tom Loonan
www.roberleybell.com
BIO
Roberley Bell’s artistic work is inspired by nature and time. Her practice draws on the world around her, in particular the scrutiny of nature and the built environment. She spent her childhood in Latin America and Southeast Asia and holds an MFA from SUNY - Alfred. She is the recipient of many fellowships including the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Pollock Krasner Fellowship, and a Senior Scholar Fulbright to Turkey. Her Fulbright project The City as The Site of Intervention resulted in a series of projects in public spaces. Currently, a Fulbright specialist leading walking workshops internationally; recent workshops have been held in Sharjah, UAE, Istanbul, Turkey and Malmö, Sweden. She has also received several residency awards, both nationally and internationally, including Sculpture Space and the International Studio Program. Internationally she has had residencies at the CITE International, Paris and the Stadt künstlerhaus, Salzburg, Austria where she completed the book A Borrowed View, and the National Center for Contemporary Art, Kaliningrad, Russia. Do you Know this Tree? Was published by Visual Studies Workshop in 2018. Bell’s work has been exhibited internationally. She has completed numerous public projects.
Artist statement:
My work centers on the production of sculpture and site-specific public projects. Inspired by nature and rooted in the art historical tradition of organic abstraction. My work both abstracts and borrows from the natural world to reveal hybridized forms. My compositions juxtapose altered commonplace objects, with handmade sculptural forms. My process of making is closely linked to a way of thinking and seeing and reflecting on the world around. Essentially as a sculptor, I am continuously in search of form. A process I refer to as finding form - inventing form where it did not previously exist. Principle to my practice are the acts of drawing and modeling. From there I move to refine the forms that then become the anchor of my compositions. I work with a wide range of materials, wood, glass, plaster, ceramic, steel to reveal in each form the essence of materiality and the ability for distinct materials to be emotive communicators. It is both the combinations of materials and their inherent properties that I explore in my work. Seeing potential in unexpected ways. There is a palpable spontaneity inherent in these works-a quirkily liveliness, they are delicate amalgams of many media, thoughtfully constructed and balanced. My sculptures are embedded in the formal language of spatial composition. Color, contrasting material textures and distinctive form are the dominate features in the work. My sculptures straddle the space between representation and abstraction.
Above Image
Still life with antler
Wood, steel, resin cast, plaster, antler, clay
47 x9 x9x inches
2018
Photo credit Tom Loonan
www.roberleybell.com
ARC 2020 is cancelled and will be rescheduled in 2021
NHPalm: Painting by Jil Crary Ross
NHPalm: Painting by Jil Crary Ross
Northampton High School Alumni Exhibition
Cancelled and postponed to summer, 2021
Curated by Lisa Leary and Zoe Sasson
Painting by Zoe Sasson
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A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery
126 Main Street Northampton, MA 01060 Phone: 413.586.5553 Gallery Hours: Tues-Sun: 12-5 Friday: 12-8 Closed Monday |
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