GATHERING & EASING
Gina Occhiogrosso
November 19 – December 31st, 2020
MIND OVER MATTER
34 X 44″ flashe, acrylic ink and textile paint on pieced and sewn muslin
5000.
COLLECT
“The summer of 2020 will be forever known as a time when America came close to unraveling. Each month becomes worse than the last. Many of us stay positive by making, because it is all we can hold onto. It’s productive and feels like life. The weaving together of all of us at this time is important so that even when a strand breaks, we are strong enough to help fasten us together and get through these hard times.
GATHERING AND EASING, from the process of bringing together different fabrics of different lengths, adjusting the puckers in the fabric, which when you “ease” will disappear. The technique reminded me of the difficulty of connection during this moment with the ongoing restriction of social gathering and unease of interaction.”
– Gina Occhiogrosso
Biography CV Statement
Gina Occhiogrosso is a contemporary artist based in New York. She is interested in the processes of disassembly and realignment, and the incorporation of common, everyday materials like thread and yarn. These activities and elements allow her to explore anxiety, loss, humor, and heroic femininity. Her bold artwork becomes a conduit for information that is disrupted and reinterpreted in compositions that suggest the fleeting nature of forces, figures, and time.
The hallowed and often masculinized tradition of painting is subverted in her work through a repeated process of cutting and then sewing painted surfaces together to develop new forms, dynamic connections, and illusions of depth.
Where the stitched edges join, there is a seam, which has both linear and sculptural qualities. The seam acts as a geometric disrupter of curvy ellipses and other organic forms that are carefully rendered and then carved up with alternating precision and chance. The ghost of those cut edges has its own presence. Where the fabric overlaps in the reverse of the painting, a slightly more opaque path is traced, issuing a new element whose origin is not at first apparent.
GATHERING & EASING
