Dimension 2.5
Allison Paschke
GALLERY II
Allison Paschke, seekers circle, 2024, Mirror, resin, acrylic gel, sand, porcelain, wire, 12 x 12 inches.
September 7 – October 6, 2024
Opening reception: Saturday, September 7, from 6–8pm
A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce Dimension 2.5, an exhibition by National Artist Allison Paschke. Paschke will be showing a new body of multi-media work that bridges the gap between two and three dimensions. Her delicate and sculptural wall pieces and installations explore geometry using translucent and reflective materials. This is Paschke’s first solo exhibition in New York City.
Paschke’s materially rich pieces are made of glass or porcelain elements mounted with insect pins or wire on mirrors that are coated with layers of epoxy resin, gel mediums, and other materials. Many of these pieces hang on the wall like paintings, and are initially perceived as two-dimensional. But the glass and porcelain elements create a three-dimensional world in which viewers see through a delicate “forest” to their own reflections in the mirror and a softened image of the surrounding room. The visual experience begins at the colored surface of the mirror, travels up the objects affixed to its surface, and then moves down deep into the mirror’s shadows and reflections, leading the gaze back and forth between two and three dimensions. The mirror itself becomes a looking glass, offering an illusory “Alice in Wonderland” glimpse into what lies behind the physical world.
Sometimes, optical distortion plays with literal dimensionality. In seekers circle, round, concave porcelain vessels shift in scale: they are largest in the middle of the piece and become gradually smaller toward its margins. This creates a sort of optical bulge, whereby the center of the mirror itself appears to project outward. The use of the circle itself can also expand or contract dimensionality further. The porcelain cups might seem large and far away, like stars viewed through a telescope, or minuscule, like cells viewed through a microscope. Shifting scale and dimension lend instability to the porcelain and glass elements. As changes in light appear to alter the surface of the mirror, their seemingly fixed positions become temporary and vulnerable, evoking fragile beings poised over an abyss, ready to fall downward off the piece or into the void behind them.
Allison Paschke lives and works in Providence, RI. She earned a BFA from The University of California at Santa Cruz, 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 and internationally. 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. http://allisonpaschke.com
View the Press Release here.
View Allison Paschke’s page here.
Photography: Matthew Sherman