Andrew Szobody
‘Untitled (Cloud Copy #3)’ by Andrew Szobody, 2017. Graphite and collage on paper, 15 x 12 inches. (c) Andrew Szobody
Related Press:
Genevieve Kotz . "NYC Gallery Scene — Highlights,” Hamptons Art Hub, March 27, 2018. (PDF)
‘Cloud Copies’
also on view:
new works by Genesis Tramaine
Mar 31-May 13, 2018
Opening reception: Sat, Mar 31, 6-9pm
Hours:
By appointment only through May 13
Directions:
Norte Maar, 88 Pine Street, Cypress Hills, Brooklyn; J/Z Train to Brooklyn. Crescent Street Stop
Norte Maar is pleased to present the first solo exhibition for artist Andrew Szobody at our Cypress Hills gallery from Mar 31-May 13. The exhibition marks a continuing interest in Szobody's work at Norte Maar having first presented his drawings at the apartment gallery in Bushwick in 2013 and several additional group exhibitions thereafter. Szobody's recent work contrasts and combines the qualities of mass-produced objects and imagery with the qualities of the personal and the handmade.
“Cloud Copies" features drawings rendered from scenic images of clouds from photo-calendars. Using rudimentary elements: pencil on paper and gird for scale and proportion, Szobody methodically transfers an image from one surface to another, but also echoes digital editing software. The grid is left in place, acting not only as a nod to the timelessness of drawing as a practice, but as a sort of minimalist device that emphasizes the literal aspects of the paper, and speaks both of the artist’s and viewer’s limitations.
The source imagery Szobody uses can be called kitsch—kitsch invokes desire. Szobody is interested in the essential difference between a handmade image and a photographic one trying to locate this difference through the pragmatism and simplicity of making copies; the drawings are not meant as aesthetic interpretations, but as reasonably accurate (or otherwise meaningfully failed) hand-reproductions. Any aesthetic dimension in the work is not unwelcome, but considered a valuable result of the process. In the final presentation of the drawings, the source images cut from print calendars is juxtaposed with the drawing, but only partially. The obfuscation of these images leads the viewer to rely on the copy as a primary way of looking at the image, thereby making more apparent the personal barriers that are always part of a viewing experience.
“I am intersecting a personal narrative of perception and desire (my own) with a mass-produced, iconic narrative of collective and commodified desire. I am interested in this intersection of complex individual experience and mass-produced iconography.” — Andrew Szobody
Andrew Szobody (b. 1990, Honea Path, SC) spent his childhood traveling about the United States and overseas and went on to spend most of his youth in Chad, Africa, and France. He holds a BFA from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI ('12) and NYCAMS Exchange Program, New York, NY ('12). Szobody has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Norte Maar’s Giacometti and a selection of contemporary drawings ('13). He currently lives and works in Ridgewood, NY.
Also on view will be new works by Genesis Tramaine from the artist's God is. Trans. Series.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, Genesis Tramaine is a highly motivated, self-identified Black-Queer-Female-Bodied Urban Expressionist and Educator with passion in creative justice through the arts in urban communities and academic centers that encourage blended learning systems, liberal arts and social justice models for students of color, alternative learners and students along the LGBT spectrum. As an urban expressionist she creates abstract portraits of men and women who transcend gender, color, and social structures as political or representative. Through a mixture of collage, acrylic and oil-based mediums, Ms. Tramaine's portraits are layer upon layer of real moments and imagined metaphors. She explores ethics and insanity, the mundane and the inhumane, spirituality, and sexuality. She digests the everyday experiences of living and serving in disenfranchised communities and regurgitates it as work that evokes déjà vu, beckoning memories of past lives and glimpses of undiscovered futures.
Genesis’ solo and group exhibitions include The Tree House, Governors Island, NYC, The Salt Space, Chelsea, NYC, The Raging Spoon Gallery, Toronto, Canada, AOF Gallery, NYC, Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ, and Paul Robeson Gallery, Newark, NJ. She has spoken on panels at Harvard University and The New School in NYC. She has also been featured in Afro Punk, Blavity, and Knack Magazine.
