Tender Edge
Dream Clinic Project Space
Columbus, OH
July 15-Aug 5, 2023
Gabriella Moreno
Karen Dana Cohen
Taylor Laufersweiler
Chantal Wnuk
Curated by Miranda Holmes
Dream Clinic Project Space
Columbus, OH
July 15-Aug 5, 2023
Gabriella Moreno
Karen Dana Cohen
Taylor Laufersweiler
Chantal Wnuk
Curated by Miranda Holmes
Dream Clinic Project Space is pleased to present Tender Edge, a group exhibition featuring work by local and national artists.
Edges denote difference: subject splits from object, figure emerges from ground, this becomes not that. The works in this show consider experiences of the edge that complicate this narrative, which often promotes simple power dynamics. Instead, these artists offer avenues of understanding difference through interrelation. Subject and object form one another. I am because you are.
Karen Dana Cohen’s paper clay works bend and warp from the flat wall like waves. Their contours break from a rectangular format, and yet their surfaces feature drawings of groups of people amongst grids. Gathered around tables or in front of large windows, these people forfeit the demarcation of their bodies for gestural unions. The paper clay material records the artist’s touch, fossilizing a mark, a movement. In this way, her work merges displacement and belonging.
Gabriella Moreno’s works slip between the categories of sculpture and drawing. Each metal unit of the chains and chokers she uses interlock with one another, creating an interdependent relationship that, when repeated, forms a line in space. These materials, along with leather, suede, and a plaster casting of the artist’s thumb, conjure dynamics between submission and dominance in sexual relationships. In this arena, boundaries are not predetermined. Edges are wrestled out, found, and always in flux.
The body contours of Chantal Wnuk’s figures waver. In each of these monoprints, the figure slumps over, both walking and falling. At times, the body contour dissolves completely with its environment, the spine becomes a cloud; at other times, the body contours hold firm, a foot slams into the ground. These fluctuating edges summon autonomy: Wnuk’s work tracks sensations as the body slides between weakness and strength, power and powerlessness.
Taylor Laufersweiler’s works record edges created by layering processes. Ridges form along the surfaces of his paintings through repeated gestures of demarcation wielded by strips of tape or ripped canvas. The build-up of layers of creates ambiguity in the timeline of the work’s creation: the viewer cannot unpack which edge came first, second, third. These works illicit a view of the edge that balances upon what came before it; somewhere within the painting lies the point of origin, hidden from view.