DENISE TREIZMAN

PRESS RELEASE

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Denise Treizman gathers discarded and readymade objects encountered on the sidewalk or curbside during daily walks through the city. These materials become part of sculptures and whole-room installations that are endlessly variable, in a process that embraces chance, explores material relationships and relies on her resourcefulness. By using society's excess, her precariously constructed work points to a culture of consumption in which personal belongings easily become unwanted trash. Treizman’s carefully composed assemblages hint at a story that is not quite accessible to the viewer. In her mark-making and sculptural gestures, the artist’s playful and improvisational manner breathes new life into abandoned objects.

For her project at Wave Hill, Treizman repurposes urban detritus to create an exuberant sculptural environment in the gallery space. These materials, kept in storage between exhibitions over the last few years, are transformed and combined in surprising ways in the Sunroom. The result is an installation that juxtaposes vestiges from urban culture with the surrounding gardens. This contrast with the landscape adds emphasis to the throwaway culture in which we live. The exhibition behaves as a fragmented assemblage of objects. Taking over the floor and walls, these amassed materials begin to lose their condition of being distinct entities as they blend into the accumulated environment and simulate the natural world outside. Upright cylinders start to resemble tree trunks in the woodland just beyond the gallery, bits of debris on the gallery floor recall fallen leaves in the autumn landscape and sunlight streaming through the Sunroom windows reflects off of the shiny surfaces and metallic paints the artist has used. Treizman’s project explores the gap between recognizable items and unfamiliar abstractions, between organic and artificial, functional and aesthetic, readymade and artist-made, allowing viewers to discover their own personal associations. The title Hasta la Vista, Maybe refers to an infinite cycle of trash, letting go of acquired materials when they no longer spark interest in the user. At the end of the exhibition, the artist will dispose of many of the pieces, while others will be kept for possible display in future projects.

Link to Press Release