detail, Is and Is Not, 2011
Glazed ceramic, kiln bricks
42 x 14 x 12 in.
Collection of Josh Rechnitz
Photo: Alan Wiener
THURSDAY, JULY 9, 12:30PM
Arlene Shechet is a New York-based sculptor. Her diverse body of work draws on balance, breath, humor and failure. Corporeal yet transcendent, her work explores the friction when categories start to slip, giving way to subliminal play.
Her work will be the subject of a 20-year survey show opening in June 2015 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, with an accompanying book co-published by DelMonico/Prestel. This summer Greg Miller/DAP will publish a book based on Shechet’s recent solo exhibition at the RISD Museum, Providence, RI. Meissen Recast focused on work the artist made during her 2012-13 project at the historic Meissen Porcelain factory in Germany and her reinstallation in the museum’s decorative arts department. Shechet is the subject of much critical acclaim including a 2012 Art in America cover story and is featured in the current season of PBS’s Art 21. Upcoming museum shows include the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, and the Phillips Collection, D.C., in 2016, and the Jewish Museum, N.Y., in 2017.
Recent solo museum exhibitions include Meissen Recast at the RISD Museum, which focused on the 2012-2013 series of works featured in this book; the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC; the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Sarasota Springs, NY; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver.
Shechet is the recipient of many awards, including a John S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship Award in 2004, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2010, an American Arts and Letters Award in 2011, and three New York Foundation for the Arts awards. Her work is included in numerous museums and public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. She lives and works in New York City and upstate New York.
Shechet is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co., NYC.
