September 10 - October 4, 2009

Emily Henretta: Modern Ruins

GLOWLAB is an innovative art gallery and creative catalyst located in New York. We collaborate with and present the work of artists exploring the convergence of art, technology and the urban environment.

September 10 - October 4, 2009

Opening Reception:Thursday September 10, 7-9 pm

Glowlab is pleased to present Modern Ruins, a solo exhibition of new works by Emily Henretta featuring two new series of monoprint collages and a multimedia site-specific installation. Henretta’s new body of work voices her long-standing interest in the intersection of built and natural environs from a contemporary vantage. Structures – unowned, unoccupied and largely incomplete – become purely visual objects. The artist sees these unlikely monuments as evidence of both excess and poverty simultaneously and finds beauty in their nascent decay.

Emily Henretta: Modern Ruins

30 Grand Street . New York, NY 10013Hours: Tuesday - Sunday, 12-6pmPhone: 212.334.0204Web: glowlab.com

Her earlier collages were ripe with careful, meticulous pen work and judicious in their handling of color. For Modern Ruins, the pieces are awash with dramatic planes of pigment and studded with screenprinted and collaged found imagery culled from vintage publications. Additionally, the artist will construct a site-specific installation that will liaise the images she makes with the complex system of building materials they portray.

Metabolist ideas of modularity and interchangeable urban constructs are referenced in the artist’s process and her finished works. Images of buildings, abandoned developments and construction materials are introduced and reworked throughout each image and series. Ultimately these reiterated images function as building materials themselves – similar constituents manipulated to construct diverse aesthetic results.

Emily Henretta graduated from Columbia University with a BA in History in 2004 where she is currently working towards her MFA. Henretta has completed a residency at the School of Visual Arts. Her work has been exhibited at the International Print Center New York and at Gallery Aferro in Newark, NJ. Modern Ruins will be on view through October 4th, 2009.

belowStuck in Stonemixed media collage on museum board 12” x 14”2009

aboveStalled Workmixed media collage on museum board 12” x 14”2009

3

Shaking Sheltermixed media collage on museum board 24” x 20”2009

4

Under Constructionmixed media collage on museum board 24” x 20”2009

5

Stagnant Structuremixed media collage on museum board 24” x 20”2009

6

7

clockwise from top leftAlmost There, All Falls Down and Glass Housemixed media collage on museum board 12” x 14”2009

8

Almost Undonemixed media collage on museum board 24” x 20”2009

9

My work interrogates a society at risk, it’s both utopian and mundane responses to coming undone, and the intended and unintended production of art during tenuous times. To accommodate an expanding population, shelter mushrooms across the landscape to intervene in the form of cityscapes, suburban developments and industrial complexes that are permanently unstable. I am interested in how the new replaces the old; how structures age and die; and what happens to their remains. The reclamation and reuse of materials, both in makeshift construction and in my own process, inform my work. My art delves into the chancy entanglement of the natural and the man-made when building projects and systems of infrastructure like shelter and sanitation are forged under duress. Printmaking is always the starting point for my work. My process converts 3-D objects into 2-D images through photography and silkscreen. These images may become 3-D again—transformed into new art objects. My work plays with dimensionality by challenging the eye to perceive objects in spaces that may not completely conform to the rules of perspective. I use a set of visual symbols to map objects: seemingly infinitesimal and interchangeable units in the vein of atoms, zeros and ones, DNA molecules, etc. These symbols confirm dimensionality in my work: they are tangible to the eye, guiding it to understand typography and architecture. The tension between simplicity and complexity—processing the visual world even as much of it lies beyond what the eye can see and the mind can understand—drives my imagination and process.

Emily Henretta

10

30 Grand Street . New York NY 10013 . between Thompson St. / 6th Ave. . subway: A/C/E to Canal St.Hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 12–6pm . phone: 212.334.0204 . email: info@glowlab.com . web: glowlab.com

30 Grand Street . New

York, NY 10013

between Thom

pson St. / 6th Avenue . subway A/C/E to Canal St.

hours: Tuesday - Sunday, 12-6pm . phone: 212.334.0204

web: glow

lab.com

on the coverUnder Construction (detail)m

ixed media on m

useum board

24” x 20”2009