At Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2016, M+B is pleased to present a two-person booth of historical Polaroid 20 x 24 works by Ellen Carey and new sculptures by Dwyer Kilcollin.
Ellen Carey's pioneering work with the large-format Polaroid 20 x 24 camera spans several decades and anticipated major themes in contemporary photography. Carey began working with the camera in New York in 1983, starting with her Portrait series (1984 - 1988). Her experimentation with abstraction in these images was a precursor to her later, purely abstract Pulls (1996 - 2007), both of which are presented at the fair. The Portraits employ multiple exposures to feature likenesses overlaid with wild psychedelic patterns and figures from mathematic-fractals, while the Pulls are completely abstract works, playing with the color and mechanics of the camera that engage with the materiality of the medium in relation to painting and sculpture.
Ellen Carey (b. 1952, New York) received her BFA from Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO and MFA from The State University of New York at Buffalo. Carey's work can be found in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; The Cleveland Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum of Art; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, among others. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at such institutions as the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT and International Center of Photography, New York, among others. In spring 2016, a selection of Carey's Self-Portraits will be presented in the thematic exhibition, The Unbearable Lightness - The 1980s: Photography, Film, at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. The forthcoming Polaroid Project show at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will also include her work. Recent group shows include The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography at the Aperture Foundation, New York; Part Picture at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto; and The Persistence of Geometry at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Ellen Carey teaches at the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford in Connecticut.
Dwyer Kilcollin's new sculptures extend the artist's interest in making objects that are as much about perception and sensation than the purely optical. As variations on the classic still life, these tableau works come into being as a compilation of cross-sectioned views. The process involves hand-layering of sand and resin, creating an effect that breaks the rules of perspective, with edges that are undefined and continually shifting to the eye. The sculpture is formed from the inside out, through careful accumulation of layers rather than focusing on the outside surface.
Dwyer Kilcollin (b. 1983, Chicago) received her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis, MO and her MFA from the University of Southern California. Her first solo exhibition at M+B, which was exhibited in conjunction with LA><ART, Los Angeles, was reviewed in the print edition of ARTFORUM. Other solo shows include Dilated Proximity at the University of California Irvine; Banquet Conference at American Contemporary, New York; 10 Forms at Reilly Gallery at Smith Center for the Arts, Providence; a solo presentation at The Armory Show, New York; and a two-person presentation with Jesse Stecklow at FIAC's (OFF)ICIELLE, Paris. Recent group exhibitions include Sibling Rivalries at Torrance Art Museum; I am Attracted None the Less at Casey Kaplan, New York; The Temple and the Parlor at Favorite Goods, Los Angeles; Cool - As a State of Mind, curated by Charlotte Cosson and Emmanuelle Luciani at MAMO, Marseille; and Almost Down at Tayuta Gallery, Tokyo. Upcoming group exhibitions include Low, curated by Michael Delucia and Ethan Greenbaum at Lyles & King, New York. Dwyer Kilcollin lives and works in Los Angeles.