Press Release: Alyson Shotz

Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College to present "bio-inspired" artworks by Alyson Shotz

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y.—New York City artist Alyson Schotz replicates nature as many of us experience it nowadays—interfaced with technology and filtered through culture; tamed, trimmed, and patented. Opener 5: Alyson Shotz: A Slight Magnification of Altered Things, on view at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College (Oct. 16–Dec. 31), will be the first exhibition to bring together works from all aspects of Shotz’s career.

Working in a variety of media, from large-scale installations to digital photography and painting, Shotz is intrigued by the notion of nature as “purely a human construction.” She sees her own work as “continuing in this tradition of seeing culture through our perception of nature,” a tradition she traces from Egyptian gardens of 2500 B.C. to the formal mazes of Versailles, from the “arcadian” wildernesses of 18th-century England to the suburban lawns of our own time.

Some of her artworks are artificial versions of living things like trees, plants, and flowers. In the exhibition’s title work, A Slight Magnification of Altered Things, for instance, Shotz creates what she calls "a dream-plant of the imagination" whose delicate leaves are made of wire and shimmering gossamer film. Mobile Flora features fabricated plant stalks, rootless but equipped with wheels for easy transport and tubes for self-feeding—the ironic ultimate in easy-care foliage for malls and corporate headquarters. In Swarm, Shotz combines plant and insect imagery to suggest bio-engineered hybrids. In her newest works, she goes deep inside the natural world to develop bizarrely beautiful images of micro-universes, viewed at a seemingly cellular level—"imaginary structures that look simultaneously natural and artificial," Shotz says.

Her newest piece, Mirror Fence (2003), is a sculpture whose pickets are faced with Plexiglas mirror that reflects their surroundings. A startling twist on this homey symbol of the suburban dream, the 140-foot-long fence has been installed in a pine grove near the Tang, where it reflects the museum and its surrounding lawns and trees as well as cross-campus passersby. While "clearly visible from a distance or when observed obliquely," ArtForum said of a previous installation, "the slats [visually] disintegrated as one approached, melting into doubled foliage….The fence generated a distinctive sculptural energy, becoming all the more real as it slid away from optical certainty." Shotz feels that “the way it flickers in and out of perception reflects the way in which this American suburban dream is something always a little out of reach.”

Born in Arizona, Shotz received a B.F.A. degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1987 and an M.F.A. degree from the University of Washington in Seattle in1991. Over the past eight years, her work has appeared in almost 70 national and international solo and group shows, including Greater New York at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, New York; Pastoral Pop at the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris in New York City; and Mirror Mirror at Mass MOCA in North Adams, Mass. Shotz lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

The Tang exhibition of Shotz’s works will be augmented by three free public events, starting with a reception at the Tang, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 16, to celebrate the opening of the museum’s four fall exhibitions. A "Dialogue" between the artist and Karen Kellogg, associate director of environmental studies at Skidmore, will take place at 7 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 17, and a curator’s tour of the exhibition will begin at noon on Tuesday, Nov. 18.

A Slight Magnification of Altered Things was organized by Ian Berry, curator of the Tang Museum, in collaboration with the artist. The fifth in the Tang’s "Opener" series, which showcases upcoming artists and works new to the region, the exhibition is made possible with support from the Laurie Tisch Sussman Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Overbrook Foundation, and the Friends of the Tang.

The Tang Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The museum is closed Mondays and major holidays. Suggested donations are $5 for adults, $3 for children over 12, and $2 for senior citizens; children under 12 are admitted free. For more information on exhibitions and events, call 518-580-8080 or go to www.skidmore.edu/tang.

Skidmore College, located in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is an independent, liberal arts institution with an enrollment of approximately 2,200 men and women. Known for its interdisciplinary curriculum, the college offers majors in both traditional liberal arts disciplines and in such fields as business, the fine and performing arts, and social work. The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery opened on the Skidmore campus in October 2000 as a center to explore all areas of study through the visual arts.

Editors and reporters: For more information on the Alyson Shotz exhibition at the Tang, please contact Barbara Melville in the Skidmore Office of College Relations, at 518-580-5740 or bmelvill@skidmore.edu. Electronic images are available via disk or e-mail.

PDF: Opener 5: Alyson Shotz: A Slight Magnification of Altered Things Alyson_Schotz_PR.pdf