Michael Steinberg
Fine Art
526 West 26th, 215
New York, NY 10001
212.924.5770
info@msfineart.net
Gallery hours:
Tue-Sat 11-6
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Amy Yoes: Room Tone
January 7 – February 12, 2005
[ PRESS RELEASE ]
Michael Steinberg Fine Art is pleased to present Room Tone by Amy Yoes, featuring paintings, drawings, and sculpture. Much of the work in the show is inspired by her recent sculpture, Beehive, 2003, which is included in the exhibition. This miniature retrospective in architectural form encapsulates Yoes’ personal oeuvre in an imagined physical space. The making of Beehive compelled the artist to reflect on her work's relation to landscape and memory. Like the model, the show itself is comprised of a number of interrelated parts.
The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the art of sound recording, and refers to the three-dimensional nature of sound behavior. This modern science recognizes that sound does not just ring into emptiness, but bounces off of objects, defining the auditory tone of a space. The five new paintings are a departure from Yoes’ all-over decorative assaults and instead adopt the illusionistic depths of theatrical sets. Scaffolding, raised platforms, and balcony views contribute to the effect. Multiple vanishing points within a single composition ask the viewer to suspend disbelief, letting go of logic in an effort to access the unconscious and achieve an aural experience beyond the purely visual. If Synesthesia is actualized, a gentle ambient sound may be heard. Within these psychologically charged spaces Yoes’ ornamental flourishes may roam free from the objects they were meant to embellish, allowing them to take on the role of characters in their own right.
Fragments, a series of sepia ink on paper drawings, completed over the last few years, started as rough sketches that were meant for use as an alphabet of motifs, to draw on when beginning a painting. They have since developed into a discreet body of work, functioning as elegant figure studies. Yoes has a large library of source material on all manner of decorative traditions, and even excavates her own paintings to isolate a flourish or filigree pattern that she would like to re-examine. As a practice Fragments takes on a quasi-scientific air, in the vein of 18th Century nature studies. From this personal taxonomy of isolated motifs, Yoes has developed large-scale, site-specific wall pieces. Occupying a corner of the gallery is a large composite drawing of decorative elements. The ink is applied directly on the walls and pays homage to baroque illusionistic conventions, this time framing the room itself.
After growing up in Houston, Texas, Amy Yoes lived in Chicago and San Francisco before settling in New York City. This year, she is producing site-specific wall drawings for Out of Bounds at Wave Hill, March 5-May 30, and for Solitude and Focus: Recent Work by MacDowell Colony Fellows in the Visual Arts at the Aldrich Museum, January 23-June 22.
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