In the Absence of Ideal Conditions

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January 13 - February 11, 2017

In the Absence of Ideal Conditions, a collaborative exhibition of sculptures, video and installation between multi-disciplinary artists Elaine I-Ling Shen and Alyssa Taylor Wendt. Using rudimentary materials and working together for the first time, their intuitive exploration into process, matter and time reveals themes of creation, existence, primordial beginnings, divination, deterioration and the notion of eternal recurrence. Much of their joint work concerns the difficulty in distinguishing between states of decline and evolution, along with the tension created by that ambiguity.

Elaine I-Ling Shen is a conceptual artist whose work grapples with questions of inherent nature, impulse and mutability. Her current practice involves living elements or materials that change over time; unpredictability, an integral part of her process, is welcome and essential fuel for her investigations. She earned her MFA from Yale University and has taught at Fordham University and the University of Texas.

Alyssa Taylor Wendt is a multimedia artist who primarily uses video and sculpture, earning her MFA from Bard College in 2008. She lives and works in Austin, Texas and Detroit, Michigan. Her process-based practice is dark and evocative, using tropes of ritual, decay and the truth of memory to provoke questions in the viewer. Recently transplanted to Austin from New York, she has shown internationally and is currently finishing her opus multi-channel video work HAINT.

Press/Reviews 

2017Elaine I-Ling Shen, Alyssa Taylor Wendt