Andrea Dezsö
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ANDREA DEZSÖ: 20 Jan - 10 Apr 2016 I WONDER Andrea Dezsö, Krewe of Intergalactic Women Travelers Reach a Cave in Outer Space (detail), 2016, gator board, wood support, theatrical gels, laser cut Bristol paper, acrylic spray paint, fabric, florescent lights 2 ANDREA DEZSÖ: I WONDER 20 January - 10 April 2016 Transylvania-born Andrea Dezsö (1968- ) aphorism. Dezsö’s interpretations, delightful works at the intersection of art, design, and perversions of this historically demure craft. Her multi-dimensional oeuvre includes female craft, conjure a darkly antiquated embroidery, illustration, ceramics, pencil notion of womanhood. and marker drawings, and books. Revisiting traditional “female” applied arts in an often Similarly, Dezsö’s books are introspective irreverent and humorous manner, she makes works with detailed, colorful drawings that them relevant to the contemporary art expose the emotional tapestry of transitional world. female forms in a seductive and revelatory manner. Recalling Victorian Era pastimes, Many of Dezsö’s works shed light on her her carousel, pop-up, and tunnel books—the childhood in Communist Romania where last of which inspires the exhibition’s site- families—unable to travel and without access specific diorama—present miniature worlds to television—had limited connection to the full of wonder. outside world. The extreme confinement of her physical environment thus led to an expansion of her imagination. “I sometimes work with an imaginary landscape populated by a cast of imaginary characters...girls who never had a chance to live a leisurely childhood—free of struggles and danger,” she explains. Dezsö also draws from her dreams, superstitions, and subconscious to create otherworldly works that are tender yet incisive and witty. For example, her Lessons From My Mother embroidery series subverts Andrea Dezsö, Girls in Night Garden, from Night the tradition of the “sampler,” a piece of Drawings, 2013, graphite on mylar. In conjunction with Pucker Gallery of Boston embroidery offering a religious or moral 3 Andrea Dezsö: has always been at my house—I like to eat An Interview and sleep close to where I work, to have Conducted by Monica Ramirez-Montagut constant access to my work. My work is Director, Newcomb Art Museum & inspired and informed by my life although Exhibition Curator not necessarily in clear or explicit ways. I’m February 2016 not trying to send messages about my life, but that’s where ideas originally come from. MRM: As you know, the Newcomb Art I have lived in a number of different places Museum honors the legacy of the Newcomb and travel extensively so I appreciate that arts and crafts enterprise (1895-1940) at some of my work is portable and I always Newcomb College, the first degree-granting have easy access to it. I can draw in my lap on coordinate college for women in the U.S. The a train, a bus, a waiting room, a park bench, enterprise included ceramics, metalwork, or on a beach; sketchbooks travel well. I can bookbinding, textiles, and embroidery; always do embroidery–in fact, there is an women produced handmade items that embroidery I am working on right here in my gave them professional training and income bag! toward financial self-sufficiency. Curating your exhibition, I looked to honor the sprit Some of the work I do is large-scale of the Newcomb artists given you also work public art, which has to be fabricated by with traditionally female crafts but in the professional teams at mosaic studios or twenty-first century and within the realm of metal fabrication plants. I love factories and contemporary art. Do you feel your work is fabrication, assembly sequences and work art or craft? Or both? performed by many people in large spaces with big machines, but I also need to have AD: I see my work as art. I make things: this ongoing intimate relationship with my drawings, paintings, sculptures, prints and work, being alone in the studio, absorbed to installations and also embroideries, cut the point of disappearing in the work. paper works, ceramics, animations, and artists books. Some of the media, materials, MRM: I find that your conviction in your and processes I use have been traditionally chosen materials is interesting because, seen as belonging to craft, but I think today for example, you could try to explore other those lines are blurred. If I feel that a medium materials for your embroidery, but you fits a project I will use it whether it comes don’t: they are needle and thread on cotton from craft, design, industry, the home. It’s fabric. You stay with what you’re comfortable important that my personal life and art with. Hence you are making us change our practice are completely integrated, each perception about what we understand as feeding the other. For example, my studio contemporary art. Because you stick to 4 Andrea Dezsö, We Were Pioneers, 2009, pop-up book, mixed media construction. In conjunction with Pucker Gallery of Boston embroidery and make tunnel books, we, and thus might show a range of works from in turn, broaden our understanding and paintings to artists books to assemblages to appreciation for these formats as art. strange little animations. Later, as I started to work with other kinds of media, it became AD: Right. When I first came to New York more evident that they, too, could be shown in 1997, I was making one-of-a-kind artists in the realm of contemporary art galleries. books and I learned that they can live in two I have heard people refer to me as a fiber different realms—either in spaces, events, artist, a book artist, a ceramic artist. I see and collections devoted to rare books, artists myself as a visual artist who works freely books, and fine prints or in contemporary with the media and materials that inspire me. art galleries. Upon investigating both, I felt When you look at a longer time-frame, not contemporary art galleries offered a bigger just five years but maybe thirty, forty, or fifty and more diverse scene. Moreover, the most years of an artist’s output, certain themes interesting galleries were open to all kinds and motifs re-emerge and thread through of experimental works that fell in the in- the various media. It all holds together as a between places between genres and media life’s work; at least that’s my hope. 5 Andrea Dezsö, Sketchbook Plates 2009, cast vitreous china, cobalt stain, glaze created in Arts/Industry, a program of the John-Michael Kohler Arts Center MRM: Can you tell me a little about the there. One thing I liked about working in ceramics on display in the exhibition? These a factory as an artist is that there was a were the result of your artist residency at constrained set of elements to use. At the the Kohler factory, the one that produces Kohler factory, my work went into the kiln sinks and toilets. They appear to be with the toilets the factory produced, so I traditional white and blue china, but they are couldn’t use just any kind of material. If one far from that. of my works exploded as a result of using an incompatible slip or glaze, destroying the AD: These series of plates were made toilets around it, that would have been a with the materials available at the Kohler serious problem. The cobalt blue paint and factory at the time I was a resident artist the transparent glaze were available at the 6 factory, and they were considered harmless AD: I recorded on them what was to the toilets so I used them on my plates. I happening. For example, that’s the Kohler made the prototype of the plates by hand- factory; the sky was very unusual that day. carving a disk of plaster with a metal knife. And others show little observations I would Then I made a plaster mold (negative) from usually jot down in my notebooks, simple this prototype and slip-cast all the plates things. Sometimes I look at my notebooks or from this mold using industrial porcelain sketchbooks and think, “That image or that slip. All the plates were cast from the same line is interesting, there is something there, mold because I was interested in the idea of that could be the beginning of a piece,” but industrial production: the endless replication they just go back in the drawer. I realized of a sculptural yet fully functional form. The if the same sketches or observations are factory had this deeply satisfying, perfectly put on porcelain, which is glazed and fired, calibrated rhythm of producing seemingly it’s a different thing. It suddenly becomes endless rows of beautiful toilets every day, more concrete, an object with a distinct a process I wished to replicate on a smaller shape and weight that bears and proclaims scale with the production of my plates. The the image and the text, which are centered plates were made from the same material and composed to fit the space. Since they as the toilets and went through the same are fairly laconic—starting a thought but casting, drying, glazing, and firing process. not necessarily completing it—they can also serve as springboards for the imagination. MRM: Full circle. MRM: You’ve brought this up in other AD: Yes! The plates as the children of the interviews explaining you want your work to toilets; the cycle of energy that fuels people be a gateway for wondering and imagining. from food to waste but in reverse; I was We, as adults, don’t exercise our creativity playing with those ideas.