Exhibition Practice
Weird Science
Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York · July 9 – August 7, 2015
Installation view, Marianne Boesky Gallery, 118 East 64th Street, New York, 2015
Three large-scale works made from silkscreened lace patterns cast in jesmonite and held within welded steel grids — presented at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, in the group exhibition Weird Science, organised by Aniko Berman.
The works in this series take lace as their source material — a textile form that sits at the intersection of domesticity, desire, concealment, and industrial reproduction. The lace pattern is silkscreened onto poured jesmonite, a material that fixes the image in three dimensions: the surface is simultaneously print and relief, flat and sculptural. As the jesmonite cures it fractures along the edges of the pattern, producing forms that are never fully resolved — erupting from the steel grid rather than contained by it.
The steel grid performs a dual function: a structural support and a framing device that holds the work at a distance from the wall, casting shadow, implying window, cage, or scaffold. The lace — culturally coded as intimate, decorative, feminine — is pressed into an industrial material and pinned within an industrial frame. The tension between these registers is the subject of the work.
Installation view
Installation view
Weird Science brought together twelve artists whose work engages the revelation of the unseen — humorous, grotesque, and beautiful in equal measure. O’Connell exhibited alongside Jacolby Satterwhite, Nick van Woert, Jay Heikes, and others, with works selected by Aniko Berman for their shared inquiry into the uncanny potential of everyday materials and systems.
Works
Untitled (RO H04)
Untitled (RO H05)
Untitled (RO H06)