PRESS RELEASE
Frame Structures, April 1 – May 6, 2018

Magenta Plains is pleased to present Frame Structures, a group exhibition featuring works by Keren Cytter, Linnea Kniaz, Sara Magenheimer and Steel Stillman. The exhibition takes its title from the acclaimed book of visual poetry by Susan Howe, whose deconstructionist attitude toward language and fragmented process shatters narrative while forming manifold meanings anew.

Similar to Howe’s collagist and layered approach, the four artists in this exhibition use structures such as the camera frame, cropping, overlays, montage, repetition, voiceover, subtitling, rephrasing, inversions, assemblage and isolation of image to contain, expound on, exploit, and defamiliarize text and image—creating endless linkages and meditations on the poetry and fragility of the everyday, of existence, and of memory.

...

Her shaped paintings, painting-based installations and freestanding sculptures transgress inherent boundaries of objects, architecture, and form—drawing inspiration from multi-faceted artists like Anne Truitt and Ree Morton. As a result, hierarchy is blurred, creating an open ecology that demands the attention of viewers and allows gradual discovery of what surrounds them. In this exhibition, new works from Kniaz’s “Framework” series are made of rounded wire cage-like forms, construction mesh, and paint. Reading more like line drawings than traditional sculpture, the skeletal and serial structures illuminate playful inversions, repetitions, and rephrasings. The forms of Kniaz’s shaped paintings emanate from color, material, texture, and measurements that are observed and experienced during the process of making itself.

--Magenta Plains