Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 22:16:16 EST
Subject: No Subject



Iris Schenker 

January 2-20

For Immediate Release   450 Broadway Gallery , New York, NY 10013 


Irys Schenker  
"After Night and Fog"

January 2 - 20, 2001
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 4, 6-8pm
 
450 Broadway Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition "After Night 
and Fog," by  sculptor, Irys Schenker. 

The installation, composed of sketches, sculptures and a 16mm animation film 
uses the documentary, "Night and Fog," (1956) by French director Alain 
Resnais, as its starting point. Freeze-frame scenes from the film are 
sketched in a small journal which is placed on a writing table for viewing. 
>From these drawings, replicas of concentration camp architecture are created 
in polymer clay. The sculptures include, camp barracks, guard towers, train 
cars, barbed wire fences, showers, gallows and latrines, among other objects. 
Because the scale of these objects changes according to their perspective in 
the original film the viewer's physical relationship to them shifts and 
changes. A second set of the original drawings comprise the material for a 
16mm animation film looped for continual viewing.
Through this process, the original film is deconstructed and an alternate 
version of "Night and Fog" is produced. 

"After Night and Fog," is an attempt to give shape to how visual 
representation influences historical memory and to examine the emotional 
resonance of space and architectural structure. 

The use of the documentary film is as arbiter of memory; the documentary, 
being a typical translator of information about the Holocaust for post-war 
generations. 

Because the realm of sculpture has less commonly been employed to evoke this 
historical period the work retains a particular resonance through its 
physicality.

Irys Schenker's work has been shown recently at Kappatos Gallery in Athens, 
Greece and in the artLover's exhibition of the Liverpool Biennial of 
Contemporary Art. Her work is in private collection in the U.S. and in 
Europe. This is her first solo exhibition.

Gallery Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11am until 6pm.


     --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---