Melissa Pokorny

Portal #1

2018

14"x19"x6" For Melissa Pokorny, found objects constitute the starting point for elaborate sculptures that have explored gender roles, the public and private spheres, and the nature/culture divide. More recently, her work engages the connection between “things” as potent containers of memory, capably representing loss and estrangement, and the deeply haunted landscape of the everyday. Unremarkable objects become activated and heightened as they are positioned within larger tableau. The compulsion to collect, the status of marginal objects and things, and speculative connections result in fractured narratives that address these occulted objects, the allure of magical thinking and the collapse of the boundaries between the animate and inanimate. Pokorny has been an exhibiting artist for over twenty years. Her large scale, assemblage-based sculptural works have been widely exhibited at venues across the US. Recent solo shows at Platform Gallery in Seattle and Front Room Gallery in New York augment a long career of solo exhibitions, beginning with Gallery Paule Anglim, in San Francisco and continuing with Bodybuilder and Sportsman in Chicago. Selected group exhibitions include venues such as Yerba Buena Gardens, Southern Exposure, Victoria Room, and New Langton Arts in San Francisco, Foodhouse Gallery in Los Angeles, Gallery 400, Columbia College,The James Hotel, and Devening Projects +Editions in Chicago, and The Richard Peeler...

This four panel composition has a rich blue and violet tones in the pigmented wax, which compliments the warmth of the tones of the embedded packaging material beneath the surface. ...

The artistic collaboration of Kelly Bugden + Van Wifvat has produced a thought-provoking body of sculptures, paintings, and constructions. Nature, childhood memories, and everyday archetypes take shape in unexpected combinations of materials. The works emerged as the tactile and visual senses channeled the ritualistic power and materiality of selected artifacts. The resulting objects exist in a space between what they were originally and what they could become. A wheel, for example, is distorted as if seen through a prism. Their collaboration grew out of years of shaping materials into one-of-a-kind objects. Intuitively, the process of creating with their hands took an inward turn. Prism is a travelogue through memories and dreams, yielding abstract forms that capture moments of transformation. Van Wifvat grew up with eight siblings and studied sculpture and environmental design in Minneapolis at MCAD. In 1979, he opened a storefront art gallery to promote the work of local artists. The space featured printed materials—art books, periodicals, fanzines, and postcard’s. Wifvat moved to New York in 1983 to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons. In 1987, he co-founded Van Gregory & Norton design studio, specializing in convex mirrors and curtain hardware...

Elegant and understated, the beauty of calligraphic scripts has resonated across cultures and time. Elizabeth Turk: Written in Stone marks the change caused by technological communic...