R & R: Elisa Soliven: Amphora Nights

R & R is pleased to present Amphora Nights, a solo exhibition of recent sculptures and drawings by New York-based artist Elisa Soliven. The show will open with a reception on Saturday, July 20, from 3–7 pm, and will remain on view through Sunday, August 18.

Throughout her artistic practice, Elisa Soliven examines how the human figure can lead to further formal transformation. Her clay sculptures, created through ancient ceramic processes that allow for enhanced flexibility and durability, often begin as contemporary portraits of friends. Likenesses and figurative elements are reworked and layered, leaving only hints of the original permutation, such as an amphora’s handles akin to arms akimbo.

Using the human body as an initial structural prompt, Soliven quickly shifts the viewer towards a more associative abstraction, allowing forms to take on more open-ended and metaphorical properties. To this end, the artist incorporates found elements, like glazed fragments from previous works, into her totemic vessels. These irregular pieces lend a quirky historicity to the sculptures, implying atavistic reads of her modern manifestations.

Her oil pastel drawings, too, suggest a certain simultaneity, serving as either studies for future sculptures or portrayals of finished ones. Consisting of pairs of separate forms, the works on paper highlight the inherent dichotomy between old and new present in Soliven’s ceramics, whose materiality both suspends construction and crafts novel connections.

About the Artist
Elisa Soliven (b. New York, NY) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received an M.F.A. from Hunter College and a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College. She has shown at Analog Diary, Beacon, NY; Harper’s, East Hampton, NY; Deanna Evans Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Arts & Leisure, N.Y., NY; Jason McCoy, N.Y., NY; Andrew Rafacz, Chicago, IL; Essex Flowers, N.Y., NY, Hesse Flatow, N.Y., NY, and Club Rhubarb, N.Y., NY. She is a co-founder of the Brooklyn based artist collectives Underdonk and Tappeto Volante Projects.

About R & R
R & R is an ongoing collaborative programming initiative of CHART, New York and Marvin Gardens, Ridgewood, NY. Located at 1548 Decatur Street, adjacent to Marvin Gardens, R & R will present a series of outdoor sculpture exhibitions, providing a platform for artists whose main practice is working with three-dimensional form or installation.