Opening Reception: Sunday, January 16, 1 - 3 pm
Matthew Dercole
K Sarrantonio
Gary Sczerbaniewicz*
ECOCA’s Solos 2022 series highlights featured artists selected from our 2021 Open Call. These concurrent solos are presented in tandem with Yale-China Association’s Brilliant Boba and Hair @ Ely.
Winter Public Hours
Sundays 12 - 5 pm
Mondays 12 - 5 pm
Wednesdays 12 - 5 pm
Thursdays 12 - 5 pm
& By Appointment
*This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
BRIAN SLATTERY : NEW HAVEN INDEPENDENT
Artists Take It Uneasy In Ely Center “Solos” Exhibit | January 27, 2021
KATHY CZEPIEL : DAILY NUTMEG
Body Work | February 1, 2022
Matthew Dercole (CT) creates forms with both organic and artificial materials to develop storylines. These artworks stem from the exploration of our relationships with ideas and imagery that are often overlooked, taken for granted, sometimes disturbing, and usually misunderstood. Within these stories, he approaches and investigates the dull, banal, and the obvious aspects of everyday life with a new curiosity. The works become combinations of the natural progression of life, such as growth and decomposition, and the human aspects of reason and ability; Matthew reacts to the way people think and feel about their identities, and how the act of learning and the responsibility of knowledge affect our everyday lives.
K. Sarrantonio (NY) is a multimedia artist striving to make artwork about the body without outright displaying the body, focusing on avoiding gender clarification and legibility. Catholic imaginings of both ecstasy and agony — specifically in their echoes of homosocialism and homoeroticism — had a large impact on K’s work and the consequent reconceptualizing of queerness within their own artwork. They consider the genderqueer body in tension with geometric and abstract forms, often using fabric to represent the body, as it is a material that in a sense is its own skin and can be very shape-shifting. While this work is not abstract, K. thinks of the fabric as an abstraction of bodily elements.
Gary Sczerbaniewicz’s (NY) practice involves an insatiable fascination with architectural spaces that evoke a sense of psychological unease. He fabricates confined space environments which include scale-shifts, using architectural models blended into full-sized structures into which the viewer is invited to physically enter and explore. These hybrid constructions inhabit a tenuous space between architecture, environment, installation, sculpture, and theatrical stagecraft.
He seeks to disorient the viewer in an attempt to break the staid, often detached, passive, and familiar approach to consuming artworks. He believes that it is in this hermetic space where authentic communication between artist and viewer occurs.