P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents the second in a series, The Orpheus Selection, a loose adaptation of Orpheus' search through the underworld for his deceased wife, Eurydice. The exhibition features site-specific installations by Nicola López and Lisa Sigal, both of whom deconstruct objects and images to form new worlds and visions. The Orpheus Selection is on view in the boiler room from October 21, 2007 through January 14, 2008.
In Bloom, Nicola López continues her exploration of the meeting between nature and technology. It is unclear whether it is man-made technology that has adopted organic patterns of parasitic growth, or whether it is nature itself that has co-opted the very building blocks of the man-made world. One is forced to ask if Bloom indicates a triumph of what is built or what is natural—or if they are even truly separable from one another.
López (b.1975, Santa Fe, New Mexico) has been exhibiting her work since 1999, including solo exhibitions at Caren Golden Fine Art, New York; LACS Gallery at SUNY Stonybrook; the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo and Taller de Manuel, both in Cusco, Peru. This is the artist’s second exhibition at P.S.1 following her participation in Greater New York 2005. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Lisa Sigal brings architecture and painting into dialogue by creating a series of physically inaccessible rooms that can only be viewed as pictorial spaces. She blurs the distinction between actual and illusionistic space by employing construction materials unconventionally, such as an unfinished sheetrock wall without egress, duct tape used for texture and drawing, joint compound as a painterly mark maker and layers of newspaper and wallpaper.
Sigal (b.1962, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) has had numerous solo and group exhibitions since 1991. Her work has been featured at Artists Space, The Brooklyn Museum, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, White Columns and Sculpture Center, all in New York; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; and Real Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut. Sigal lives and works in New York.
The Orpheus Selection: Nicola López and Lisa Sigal is organized by P.S.1 Curatorial Advisor Phong Bui.