Color in Perspective
Three Person Show: Allison Paschke, Sagarika Sundaram, Soonae Tark
October 4 – October 28, 2022
Reception: Saturday, October 8, 4 - 6 p.m.
The exhibition, Color in Perspective, presents works of art by three intensely focused women artists. Each artist has worked with assorted colors, dynamically complementary materials, and visual forms that have emanated from their consciously present backgrounds. Collectively, their artworks reveal the timely aesthetic aspects of our lives as they have emerged from their unique tactile sensibilities. Within this context, the featured work of Color in Perspective is an exhibition that creates connections between the differences and similarities in how we live and think.
Allison Paschke's work incorporates acrylic mirrors, resin, translucent ceramic, gel mediums, and glass. Paschke is interested in the light-reactive effect that reveals an interaction between her choice of materials. The artist grew up with an artist mother and worked a practical job for a living after earning her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of art. Throughout her career, she has maintained her emotional feeling for art in everyday life. music for floating (2020) is composed of ceramic elements fixed with wire on an acrylic mirror. Her ceramic pieces are reflected in the slightly sensitive acrylic mirror, which response to small movements. The work presents a remarkable encounter between the smoothly reflective material and traditional ceramics. Her other works contain the artist's stories, such as her memories with small toys. Her work often depends on the repetition of geometry and systems as an implicit language.
The strengths of Soonae Tark's work are based on vivid colors and reductive, geometric form. Rather than descriptive or decorative elements, color and form are utilized in her work without secondary effects. This energy is apparent in her work in a way that corresponds across time and space. Tark was born in Korea and studied in the south of France prior to settling in New York. Her work's combination of primary colors is reminiscent of the various colors found in the Korean color patch outfit. The memory of the dazzling sunlight of southern France portrays the brilliant colors found in nature, her work functions as an intense global language that communicates the presence of nature in all aspects of life. In addition, the work builds image systematical forms for creating three-dimensional effects on a flat surface.
Sagarika Sundaram's work is made in wool by compressing hand-dyed fiber into dense forms. The material is dyed with natural pigments from roots, rhizomes, and leaves. There is life and death in the pale purple color created by the insects from the Amazon. She believes her work presents the materiality of indigenous wool as shown in its relationship, revealing the labor process involving the use of hands. The images found in her work use abstraction to reinterpret textiles in terms of botanical and psychedelic forms. Her work has deep roots in her experiences, such as the peaceful and serene atmosphere of her boarding school in India in the Rishi Valley, which Krishnamurti upheld as a holistic space. Her work entitled Spider Lily (2021) was brought to a shamanic dance to symbolize the true meaning of life and healing.
This exhibition provides a distinctive and abstract expression of the work and lives of three women artists. The optical vibrations of these works merge into an enchanting connection in the gallery space.
Artist’s Bio
Allison Paschke is an artist and independent curator living and working in Providence RI. Her delicate and sculptural wall pieces and installations explore geometry using translucent and reflective materials such as mirrors, resin, acrylic gels, and porcelain. Paschke earned a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of art. She has exhibited in solo and group shows in Providence, Brooklyn, San Francisco, and other locations nationally. Paschke received a fellowship in “new genres” from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. Her work is included in national and international private collections as well as in several corporate and museum collections, including the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. She has curated three exhibitions in the Providence area and two in Brooklyn.
Soonae Tark exhibited internationally across the United States, France, and Korea, such as Rockefeller Center Plaza, New York, NY; Union Station, Los Angeles Metro, CA; Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee, FL; Queens Museum of Art, NY; and U.S. Ambassador's residence in Seoul, Korea. Her recent public art commission includes completing an invigorating mural for the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York. She also completed permanent public art projects for the City of New York; a two-story mural work was placed in a New York City Public School in Queens. Her work was featured on the cover art of New York City Mayor Bloomberg's Mayor's Management Report; as well as a glass mosaic mural outdoors on the raised platform of the Buhre Avenue Subway Station located in the Bronx, New York through the MTA Arts for Transit Program. She has received many awards and grants, including two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants. Her work has been favorably reviewed by The New York Times.
Sagarika Sundaram (b. Kolkata, India) lives and works in New York. In 2022 she was awarded The Hopper Prize, a Bronx Museum AIM Fellowship, and a residency at Art Omi. In 2020 she received the Tishman Award for Excellence in Climate, Environmental Justice & Sustainability, and the Michael Kalil Endowment for Smart Design. She is Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt. Her work has recently been exhibited at Frestonian Gallery in London alongside works by Sonia Delaunay, Frieze New York (2021, with Jhaveri Contemporary) and Nature Morte, New Delhi. Sundaram graduated with an MFA in Textiles from Parsons / The New School, NY. She studied at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and at MICA in Baltimore.
