The fine art exhibition “Inside/Out: Women Artists Between Public Space and Studio Practice,” currently on view in the Alumni Room Gallery on the first floor of Tuohy Hall on the Brooklyn Campus, might be described as a small, intimate show.
For starters, the gallery itself is relatively small. It also features the work of just five women artists — Blanka Amezkua, Maria Dominguez, Tomo Mori, Kristy McCarthy and Quimetta Perle — rather than a larger group. Plus, each artist has just a few relatively small works on view.
So, by and large, the works seem to draw you closer rather than have you step back to view them from a distance.
But one shouldn’t confuse size with significance.
What visitors will discover in the Alumni Room gallery are works of art that are not only visually stunning but are also inventively designed. These powerful works feature vibrant colors, exquisite textures and brilliant patterns. They also incorporate an innovative mix of realism, expressionism and abstraction, with some blurring the lines between two-dimensional and three-dimensional. Although some works in the exhibition are rectangular, others take on unconventional shapes, giving the show an expressive, dynamic energy.
What’s also intriguing to note is that the curator has attempted to give visitors a sense of the public and private sides of the artists in the show. In a statement for the show, Dominguez says of the artists, “This exhibition presents work developed within the privacy of their studios, offering an intimate view into their creative processes that often cross into the public. The pieces reflect personal expression shaped by the realities they navigate daily — as artists balancing roles such as mothers, wives, partners and community builders — while sustaining their commitment to making work and cultivating both home and community.”
All of the works are wonderful. But “Grief – Elliot” by Kristy McCarthy, a small 5-inch diameter work of embroidery on linen, is an extraordinary work. Most of the work includes tightly organized stitches, much like traditional embroidery, including the three other pieces McCarthy has in the show. But there are also additional, seemingly random stitches that almost look like mistakes. Some stitches are even dangling from the work. These loose, “mistake” stitches provide a wonderful tension next to the traditional embroidery. Visually, it looks as though the artist hasn’t finished the work — or perhaps it’s in a state of decay and is falling apart. In many ways, it’s a work that poetically reflects the curator’s central theme for the exhibition.
“Inside/Out: Women Artists Between Public Space and Studio Practice” is on view in the Alumni Room Gallery through Thursday, October 22.
