Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to announce Part II of its summer presentation in Aspen, expanding on the gallery's longstanding engagement with the Colorado town's vibrant art community. Featuring new works by the Haas Brothers, Sarah Meyohas, and Celeste Rapone in the temporary space on East Hyman Avenue, the presentation showcases a selection of formally, materially, and technically inventive work from across its program.
With a selection of new Bronze Accretions and Microslimers, the Haas Brothers (b. 1984; Austin, TX) continue their investigation into the slippery divide between art and design with their signature humor, whimsy, and originality. Inspired by processes of layered accumulation found in the natural world-in things like coral and tree fungus-the artists produce their Accretions by brushing wet clay onto dry clay in layers, amassing the uniquely textured surface by hand over time. To produce a similar effect in bronze, the artists have developed an innovative process, loosely based on ceramic coil building. To color the cast bronze sculptures, the artists apply a chemical patina to the surface of the works, creating natural variations in rust to achieve the desired colors and effects. Inspired by a stone carving of a snail at the Batalha Monastery in Portugal, the Haas Brothers's new blown glass and marble Microslimers-like many of the artists' creatures-offer a deeply personal reflection on family. Crafted in riotously colorful blown glass-an entirely new material in the artists' practice-the Microslimers emerge from ornate cast bronze or carved marble shells. With buggy eyes and emotive expressions-and witty titles-the mollusks are at once humorous and heartfelt.
In a selection of new works, Chicago-based painter Celeste Rapone (b. 1985; New Jersey) imbues uncannily flattened scenes with autobiographical details, art historical references, and artifacts of daily life, surrounding female subjects with detailed depictions of pizza boxes and used mayonnaise packets, ripped plastic cups and glasses of red wine, hair clips and single shoes. Rapone's figures contort impossibly within their spaces, their limbs pushing against the frame as the artist tests the boundaries between figuration and abstraction. For the Aspen presentation, Rapone has made four site-responsive paintings, drawing motifs from imagined summer retreats to mountain resorts. In bright-almost garish-summer colors, the artist depicts women napping in fields of wildflowers, lounging in front of magnificent mountain views, hunting for truffles, and searching for treasure with metal detectors. In their pursuit of leisure, Rapone's figures are pushed to the foreground, threatening to spill out toward the viewer. But there is a darker undercurrent to these paintings as well-Rapone's layers dark, muted colors over the brightness, implying that all is not as it appears on the surface.