Melissa Pokorny Sculptures

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...

14"x19"x6" Melissa Pokorny's work focuses on the sense of space, and its role in structuring memory and identity. Her larger-scale sculptures, mixed media tableaus, and installations incorporate fragmented images of landscape and nature that highlight contested spaces, borders and boundaries between the natural world and our presence in it. Pokorny's recent work explores literal and metaphorical attachments , in a call-and-response between people, places, and things. The sense of absence prevails, emphasized by situations that illicit awareness of loss -- of losing one's was, or the loss of memory to time and distance. People go missing, and things are left behind. Mellissa 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...