Material Variations

Exhibit open February 16th – March 30th
Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 12:00-4:00pm

Kiosk Gallery at Utility Works
32 E Baltimore Ave., Lansdowne, PA 19050

Marria Nakhoda  |  Cassie Renée Peña  |  Maria Fernanda Nuñez Alzate

These artists approach material with a reverent comedy. An amphora half coated in to-go foil, the porcelain reminiscent of a cool brick of cream cheese. A ceramic stick fired in a wood kiln, burnished glossy by the burning of that which it represents. Hefty brushes casually splay their leg-like bristles toward one another, as if playing footsie. All three artists engage in material mimicry. Peña renders a classical greco-roman vessel form using non-western coiling methods. Nakhoda transforms clay–those preciously plastic fine grains of earth–back around into solid stone. Nuñez Alzate gestures dripping wax into a luscious broken egg white. In these works I find a particular affection for ordinary materials. Indeed, in their own words these three embrace the common, the overlooked, the mundane, the quotidian, the humble, the useless, the provisional. They cannily mix high and low, industrial and intimate, ancient and contemporary. The effect is an equalizing of media. The mundane is uplifted, the special is grounded. Material as material.

– Zach Ozma, curator

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