Heather Rowe // Leslie Hewitt

Heather Rowe: On Returning November 9 – December 23, 2007 Opening Reception: November 9, 6-8pm

D'Amelio Terras is pleased to present our second solo exhibition with Heather Rowe. She will exhibit On Returning, a single large-scale sculpture positioned between the two main gallery columns. This work continues Rowe’s exploration of architectural fragmentation, structural dysfunction, and material inversion. Countering the more conventional construction-like elements are strategically placed details, culled from a range of design styles and periods.

This installation takes a late modernist house designed by Paul Rudolph in 1972 as its point of departure. The Westport Connecticut dwelling was recently demolished to make way for a new construction. In Rowe’s incarnation of the design, the façade of the house is mirrored and the two resulting structures are inverted and placed at an angle. The outside walls face each other and the interior becomes exposed and unprotected. Remnants of a fictional domestic space (smashed window frame, tiled bathroom mirrors, a patterned curtain) are inserted within the sculpture and elevate it into a more personal and psychological realm. This illusionistic space is meant to be passed around and through allowing viewers to return to the same intersections and question their similarities and/or differences. Here, the architecture, its interior design and style become pronounced in a particular way where they become extensions of irrational attachments and neurosis.

“…on returning to a place which exists only in the mind. Either a place destroyed or a place once inhabited and then left. The mind brings about distorted ideas of the actual space-assigning scale and size in a more psychologically charged way, shaped by events that occurred there.” (from the artist)

Rowe is currently featured in 'Undone' at The Whitney Museum at Altria, New York. In 2007 she was included in Practical F/X, Mary Boone Gallery, New York, and Stubborn Materials, Peter Blum Gallery, New York. Her work has been exhibited at The Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati; Michael Zink Galerie, Munich; White Columns, New York; and Artists Space, New York. She received her MFA from Columbia University and lives and works in New York City.

The Artist would like to thank Nepal Asatthawasi at the Paul Rudolph Foundation for her generous help with this project as well as Chris Mottalini for his photographs of the Micheels House.

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Front Room Its Just a Feeling. . . Leslie Hewitt with a contribution by Rose Olu Ronke Ojo November 9 – December 23, 2007 Opening Reception: November 9, 6-8pm

D’Amelio Terras is pleased to present our first project with artist Leslie Hewitt. The site-specific installation created for our front room space consists of a triad of works: a video projection, a photo sculpture and a text by writer Rose Oluronke Ojo. The individual parts support each other formally as well as conceptually.

The freestanding wall in the center of the room is a platform for two of the works. The grainy Hi-8 video recording of a performance resembling raw footage is projected on to one side of the wall. A geometric structure evocative of an awning is hung low on the other. A composite of found 1970’s news imagery and a textbook definition of the word “consume” published in the mid-80s create a montage that covers the surface of the marquee.

Here, as in her earlier projects, Hewitt addresses the architectural space and history through photographic and sculptural means. She takes a stance to privilege the flux of a vernacular aesthetic that includes formal concerns of color, light, shadow, composition, balance, scale and function while acknowledging the history embedded in sculptural forms. Hewitt’s work questions both the visual and physical experience through archiving the intangibles of life, and transforms the residue of popular culture in the realm of the personal. The works together pose questions about the conundrum of the past and its connection to the contemporary moment.

Leslie Hewitt is currently an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY. In 2007 her exhibition Replica Of A Lost Original was presented in the project room at Artists Space, New York, NY. In 2005 ­ 2007 she was a resident at the CORE program, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX. Her past exhibitions have included The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY; Sculpture Center, New York, NY; and LAXART, Los Angeles, CA. Hewitt’s work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.

Heather Rowe // Leslie Hewitt