Twins:
Just A Memory
Feb 6 to Feb 10, 2013
Opening Reception: Feb 6, 6 - 9 PM
Michael Mut Project Space is pleased to present New York City artist, Arlene Rush in her first solo exhibit with the gallery, entitled Twins: Just A Memory, on view from February 6 - February 10, 2013. Her new photo-based work depicts outsized enigmatic figures, where she incorporates herself into photos and art historical references as male and female protagonist.
Rush, a fraternal twin to a male, uses this relationship as a springboard to investigate the ideas of gender, beauty, self-image and aging. By means of photography she transforms herself through Photoshop, substituting her face to merge with someone else while simultaneously distancing herself from the images. In the act of being someone else Rush thereby creates multiple layers of meaning behind each image. Not autobiographical, it is an examination of the layering of identity, gender and self.
In Rush's Twins Just A Memory series, digital prints are face-mounted to plexi, then collaged with mosaic of crushed glass pieces, reflecting the fractured whole and dispelling the notion of photography capturing time. Only the eyes remain exposed from the shattered glass, which appear to follow the viewer as they move.
In Twins Cameo, she incorporates herself into anonymous photos and art historical references set in cameo-like frames, interjecting the male counterpart into a form that traditionally represents beauty to comment on historical ideas and assumptions. Typical of Rush, these works are at once insightful and amusing, alarming and poignant, holding a mirror up to contemporary society to reflect social, historical, political and ontological issues.
In the exhibition catalogue for a 2008 show entitled LOCUS, Michelle Falkenstein writes, "Arlene Rush's Twin series, Rush subverts assumptions about gender, age and kinship, implying a continuum and relationship both artistic and genetic.
" Arlene Rush widely exhibits her work in galleries and museums throughout the US, Asia and Europe and in numerous public and private collections among which are: Beth Israel Comprehensive Cancer Center- West Side, New York, NY, Joe Baio, New York, NY, Pavel Zoubok, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York, NY, MOMA, Wales, UK, MUBE, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Mark Golden, GOLDEN Artist Paint, Berlin, NY, Robert H. Chaney, Houston, TX, ARCO Chemical, Newton Square, PA, The Center For Emerging Visual Artist, Philadelphia, PA, and Library of Congress, Great Hall, Thomas Jefferson Bldg., Washington, DC.
The Center for Emerging Visual Artist granted her a residency in 1988 to Barcelona, Spain and in 2011 she was awarded the Pat Hearn & Colin De Land Foundation Grant.
In 2013 Rush is slated for several group shows including Sikkema Jenkins Gallery, New York NY, and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, a multi media exhibition, Loft in The Red Zone, originated in New York City (2011) to commemorate 9/11.
