Andrea Morganstern

Summer Reading

Abby Cheney, Alexandra Hammond, Alina Tenser, Alison Kudlow, Courtney Puckett, Dena Paige Fischer, Elisa Lendvay, Esther Ruiz, Elisa Soliven, Heidi Norton, Kate Rusek, Kate Stone, Langdon Graves, Lauren Skelly Bailey, Leah Dixon, Lexa Walsh, MaryKate Maher, Natale Adgnot, Stina Puotinen, Tamsen Williams, and Trish Tillman

Shelter is pleased to announce Summer Reading, a group exhibition featuring works from members of the Women Sculptor Group artist collective. 

Intimacy is the through line connecting the pieces in this show, both in physical scale and the sensual resonance of content and use of materials. While many works walk the line of abstraction, others offer both direct and indirect figuration, removing or obscuring the central figure. Color engages the viewer – sometimes highly saturated, others subdued. 

Themes of concealment are prevalent, as are the general ideas of our relationship to space, both in the sense of the object itself, its scale, and the installation of it. Surface quality and subterfuge become vehicles for the subconscious through their contemplative presentation. Yet the works all unite with a voice to the power of subtlety and the strength of physical engagement with creative production, both as maker and viewer.

In a craft that is often considered male dominant, this collective of women has set a mark for themselves in NY. The WSG was formed in 2017 by now deceased artist Sarah Bednarek. At the core of the group which now includes over two hundred plus members and two chapters, artists consider objecthood and what it means to be a non-male making things that take up space. NYC is a place where space is small and rare and Women and Non-Binary people are often competing and trying to stake their own. This exhibition marks the first of its kind and asks us to consider scale as a form of intimacy and as a means to intensify the space, the object, and the participants. As much as this group likes to claim physicality, it also, at its mission, depends on community and a level of intimacy and trust that comes with it.