A New & Delicious Show Curated by Will Hutnick for Standard Space
Lucy Stark, Favorite Flavor, acrylic on wood panel, 18 x 24 in, 2022
Standard Space is pleased to present FEAST, a delicious group exhibition curated by Will Hutnick featuring painting, sculpture and video by Taylor Lee Nicholson, Max Benjamin Sarmiento, Dana Sherwood, Lucy Stark and Heather Yeo. FEAST is a sequel - of sorts - to Hutnick’s first curatorial project at Standard Space in 2020 titled SNACKS. Are you hungry yet?
Heather Yeo
Heather Yeo, Nº 7, oil, acrylic, vinyl paint, and colored pencil on wood panel, 12 x 9 in, 2021
First on the menu is Heather Yeo’s paintings of mouth-watering cocktails. Highly detailed (the paintings) and exquisitely crafted (the real life cocktails, I’m assuming), Yeo’s practice is rooted in personal narrative and nostalgia in order to savor one more memory, one more sip.
"My husband has been crafting cocktail recipes for me ever since we started dating. We tasted every variety of alcohol, studied the color combinations of different liquids, collected cocktail glasses, and crafted cocktails that reflected our story. By working on a painting with the cocktail that my husband made for me, I try blending our stories, feelings, and memories on the wood panels. The finger-sized cocktail ingredients are added to celebrate the only recipe. I try to reproduce the actual taste in the painting by using different textures of paint and various painting techniques." - Heather Yeo
Max Benjamin Sarmiento
Max Benjamin Sarmiento
Plato Típico, acrylic, clay, fabric, metal mug, paper and wood, 16 x 9 x 6 in, 2019
Next up is Max Benjamin Sarmiento who carves into his personal experiences as well by sharing his family’s Ecuadorian traditions and stories. Through a playful and sensitive handling of mixed media, Sarmiento is able to (re)construct personal narratives about family relationships, love, despair, and the cultural touchstones that connect one another.
"Through my work, I share stories and moments I’ve experienced, as well as that have been passed down to me. This work is compelling as it depicts traditions and obstacles that folks in my community can relate to. Sharing these stories carves space for us and in the arts, and also carves space for us in the ever changing American culture. My work is a way to share Ecuadorian traditions and the chaos of inner-city Queens. It includes a variety of materials, like paper, fabric, wood, glass, metal, and acrylic. I work with these different materials to create a structure or frame which will act as the stage for my characters. The dramatic and theatrical nature of Gothic architecture and religious painting throughout Western art history, as well as the bold colors of traditional Ecuadorian art, have also found ways to play into my pieces. My practice is heavily influenced by Magical Realism, which I use to create vibrant and playful works depicting a range of themes from family relationships (both broken and repaired ones), romantic love, despairs and hopes, dreams and nightmares, sports and personal victories." - Max Benjamin Sarmiento
Taylor Lee Nicholson
Taylor Lee Nicholson
Shopping Cart Collapsing Beneath the Weight of my Needs
mixed media (paper mache, aluminum foil, felt, paper pulp, cling wrap, pipe cleaners, silicone, plaster), 40 x 46 x 26 in 2023
Employing a similar modality that leans heavily towards craft in the very best way possible, Taylor Lee Nicholson has created a brand-new, mixed media sculpture in the form of a banal shopping cart literally exploding with food products and other goodies. Inspired by the artist’s recurring dream (or nightmare?) of being trapped inside a Walmart-type superstore, Shopping Cart Collapsing Beneath the Weight of My Needs sharply addresses our tangible and intangible desires, and the insatiable hunger that drives many of our decisions.
"Shopping Cart Collapsing Beneath the Weight of My Needs was inspired by this recurring dream that I have where I'm endlessly shopping in some sort of Walmart superstore kind of warehouse. I don't know where it is, and I never finish shopping, and it's an incredible banal dream that feels more alarming for how boring it is than any terrors involved. In attempting to figure out what this means, I think about the iconography of a shopping cart - a vessel that holds
whatever we're buying (or not buying, in the case of online shopping where I fill carts with items that I never actually follow through on purchasing). It's more of an idea of a cart, than an actual cart. I also think of the hunger inside of me that can seem to only be soothed by window shopping the internet, or making a Target run, this impulsive need to acquire things. But it doesn't stop at things; I want this lifestyle, or that dream, or a different personality, to be funnier, to get invited to places or events, and so on. Tangible and intangible desires, filling tangible and intangible carts. Half the time I don't even know what I want, but I know that I am hungry, and there is a deep psychic pain to that longing that I haven't figured out how to satiate." - Taylor Lee Nicholson
Lucy Stark
Lucy Stark, Steak Dinner with Side Salad, acrylic on wood panel ,16 x 20 in, 2023
Let’s move on to a full meal and enjoy Lucy Stark’s rich paintings depicting breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert, respectively. Stark documents food and dishes with personal significance as a way to capture and celebrate the fleeting moment right before a meal commences. While most of Stark’s work tenderly invites you to participate in a single meal, Favorite Flavor presents a bombardment of treats from your local ice-cream truck that - combined with good humor (see what I did there?) - comments on our endless, dizzying loop amidst our current digital and social media-crazed age.
Dana Sherwood
Dana Sherwood
Inside the Belly of the Rabbit (baby Venus), oil on panel, 24 x 36 in, 2022
Satisfied yet? Exhausted? Take a breather inside one of Dana Sherwood’s dreamy paintings of fantastical cakes and animals. Specifically, lounge inside the belly of a rabbit, snail or snake and consume a brightly colored cake while you’re being consumed yourself. It’s finally time to slow down. Put your feet up. Enjoy your feast. We all knew it would end this way, right?
"I process a lot of the ideas in my work through making the videos, when I am collecting and creating a kind of cosmography of experience with animals. I’m always searching for methods to communicate with them in different ways. Of course, food comes as the most obvious way to communicate with animals, but I also infuse energetics, ritual and magic into these experiences. The Inside the Belly paintings came from this secondary conversation I was trying to have with animals. The series sprang from a curiosity about what it would be like if I had a horse for a mother and what it would be like to be nurtured inside the belly of a horse, a rabbit, a snail….etc." - Dana Sherwood
FEAST
Curated by Will Hutnick
July 1 - August 6, 2023
For media inquiries, please email victoria@pamplemousspr.com
STANDARD SPACE
147 Main Street, Sharon, CT 06069
Open Friday - Sunday from 12-5pm & By Appointment
For sale inquiries, please email info@standardspace.net or call 917.627.3261
About Will Hutnick
Will Hutnick (b. 1985, Manhasset, NY) is an artist and curator based in Wassaic, NY and Sharon, CT. He received his M.F.A. from Pratt Institute in 2011 and his B.A. from Providence College in 2007. Hutnick is a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Painting, as well as a grant recipient from the Berkshire Taconic Foundation in 2017 and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2016. Solo exhibitions include: Pamela Salisbury Gallery (Hudson, NY), Elijah Wheat Showroom (Newburgh, NY), Standard Space (Sharon, CT), Providence College Galleries (Providence, RI), One River School (Hartsdale, NY), The Java Project (Brooklyn, NY), and St. Thomas Aquinas College (Sparkill, NY). Selected group exhibitions include: Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (New Paltz, NY), Hollis Taggart (Southport, CT), Geary Contemporary (Millerton, NY), 1969 Gallery (New York, NY), Heaven Gallery (Chicago, IL), Soft Times Gallery (San Francisco, CA), Sugarlift (New York, NY), and Collar Works (Troy, NY). He has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency, Vermont Studio Center, Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, Soaring Gardens Artists’ Retreat, DNA Artist Residency, Hewnoaks, Stove Works, and the Wassaic Project, as well as a curator-in-residence at Benaco Arte and Trestle Projects. Hutnick has curated numerous exhibitions at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Ortega y Gasset Projects, Trestle Projects, Pratt Institute, Wassaic Project, Troutbeck and Standard Space, among others. From 2015-20, Hutnick was one of the Co-Directors of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run curatorial collective and exhibition space in Brooklyn. He is currently the Director of Artistic Programming at the Wassaic Project, a nonprofit organization that uses art and art education to foster positive social change.
About Standard Space
Standard Space is an artist run project space and gallery for innovative and challenging contemporary art. Our primary focus is on collaboration with artist / curators who champion emerging and mid-career artists in amplifying the voices—both curatorial and artistic—of underrepresented groups in the art world. We partner with curators who push the envelope and welcome all media, from video installation and performance art to painting, printmaking, and sculpture.