Irrational Craft
February 9 – March 30, 2023
Opening reception Saturday Feb 11, 7-9pm
81 Leonard Gallery is pleased to present Irrational Craft, a selection of artists who seek to recontextualize craft, rejecting the culture of immediacy through nuanced engagement with material. In dialogue, Rhea Barve, Abby Cheney, Delia Pelli-Walbert, Hannah Eve Rothbard, and Kris Waymire explore themes of place and purpose within a continuum of storytelling.
In timelines that stretch from geological to generational, the artists of irrational craft sow relationships through physical and repetitive processes. The artists draw from histories of form and gesture in clay, beads, glass, and paper, translating embodied knowledge into the contemporary.
Hannah Eve Rothbard and Kris Waymire invoke cultural symbolism, both popular and personal. In a harmonious cacophony, Waymire combines disparate materials; beads, glass, metals, complicating visual and individual definitions. Beadwork patterning derived from Old Bering Sea tools encircle the image of a cold saw blade in Saw, 2023, superimposed with Dora the Explorer spinning in an iconoclastic dance. Referencing architecture and pattern, Rothbard weaves her narrative into the communal history of Jewish Americans. Illustrated in lace-like collage, Crumbs, 2023, bridges ritual and Pop culture through the unifying experience of shared food.
Continuing an exploration of architectural form, Abby Cheney reimagines paper pulp in columnal sculptures. The works, simultaneously soft and solid, draw into focus the emotional imprint of space. Molded, textural surfaces preserve the memory of Cheney’s touch.
Delia Pelli-Walbert and Rhea Barve explore ceramic materiality, informed by biological and mineral knowledge. Pelli-Walbert’s sculpture confronts geological time, reenacting the glacial action of water and stone. Drips of pewter on porcelain accumulate in craggy and fluid pools, while traces of movement are etched into slabs with wild clay and salt crystals. Barve’s anthropomorphic sculptures reference ecological interdependence in fossil-like earthenware forms. With subtle tenebroso illumination and undulating, supple surface, रक्षाकुंज (rak-sha-kunj) and अंगारा (angaara) suggest life hidden within their depths.
Irrational Craft is on view Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, 12-6pm, through March 30th, 2023. No appointment necessary.
Rhea Barve was born in Mumbai and raised in Bangalore, India. She is currently based in NYC where she works as a ceramic technician. Her practice explores ecological interdependence in ceramics and virtual space. She holds a BFA from New York University with a concentration in ceramics and animation, and has exhibited at 80 Washington Square East Gallery and Governor’s Island WetLabs.
@rheabarve
Abby Cheney
is an artist and educator from Baltimore, MD, currently living in Brooklyn, NY. Her interdisciplinary practice investigates how we use emotion and memory to assign value to objects and spaces regardless of material worth. She received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute in 2018, and her BA in Studio Art and English from Kenyon College in 2014. Her work has been exhibited at a variety of spaces and institutions, including Flux Factory, 601artspace, Chashama Space to Present, Pierogi’s The Boiler and SPRING/BREAK Art Fair. She has held residencies at Ox-Bow School of Art, Trestle Art Space, Vermont Studio Center and Byrdcliffe Artists Colony. She works as a Teaching Artist with Studio in a School in elementary schools throughout NYC.
abbycheney.com
@abby__cheney
Delia Pelli-Walbert lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Her sculptural practice cultivates through clay a relationship between past and present – drawing from familial and imagined histories. She holds a BFA with Honors distinction from New York University, and has exhibited at various spaces including 80 Washington Square East Gallery, ArtsClub DTLA, and Monira Gallery at Mana Contemporary.
@deliapelli
Hannah Eve Rothbard is a multimedia artist, curator, and arts administrator based in New York. She works primarily in mixed media painting, exploring the capacity and limits of built space as a container— for beauty, growth, culture, and comfort. She holds a BFA with Honors distinction from New York University. Rothbard has exhibited at venues in New York City including 80 Washington Square East Gallery, Local Project, and the New York City Poetry Festival, and has held residency at the Materia Prima Foundation (Italy).
hannaheverothbard.com
@hannaheverothbard
Kris Waymire grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and lives and works in New York, NY. They make colorful work fueled by memories of power grids, combining “what does not belong.” Waymire holds a BFA from New York University, and has exhibited at 80 Washington Square East Gallery and Governor’s Island WetLabs.
@kris_waymire
Image above: Rhea Barve, रक्षाकुंज (rak-sha-kunj), 2022, Ceramic, 19 x 16 x 16 in
To inquire about purchasing please email info@81leonardgallery.com or inquire via Artsy.
