PHOEBE WASHBURN

"It Makes For My Billionaire Status" - September 17 - October 22, 2005

Exhibition dates: September 17 – October 22, 2005
Reception: Saturday, September 17th, 6 to 9pm

PHOEBE WASHBURN
“It Makes For My Billionaire Status”

Kantor / Feuer Gallery (www.kantorfeuer.com) is pleased to announce a new installation by New York-based artist, Phoebe Washburn. The exhibition opens September 17th and will run through October 22nd, 2005. This will be the first exhibition in the new gallery. Phoebe Washburn’s solo exhibition will run concurrently with her exhibition at the Armand Hammer Museum at UCLA.

“It Makes For My Billionaire Status” is an installation that includes live plants and weeds fastened amongst found scraps of wood and 2x4s. The installation is built using organizational and categorical systems that the artist sets for herself at the beginning of the building process. The systems develop names, have their own duties, and spawn new systems leading to a controlled but sprawling fractal of debris.

Washburn’s previous installations have been constructed out of large quantities of a single discarded material, such as cardboard or scrap-wood, that are then painted on one side with “mis-tints,” or rejected commercial house paint. Starting with anything that the architectural system can be braced onto, her discarded material is built up and produces intricate worlds. These are detailed with the appearance of tidal waves or cities built into mountains. As the growing material fills a space, it often absorbs the debris of its own fabrication or other found elements existing in the exhibition space.

Washburn lives and works in New York. Born in 1973, Washburn graduated with a MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2002. Past solo exhibitions include Zach Feuer Gallery (LFL), New York, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, The Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, The Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, and Kunsthalle St Gallen in Switzerland. She has received numerous grants including the Marie Walsh Studio award in 2002 and the Academy of Arts and Letters Award in 2005. Her exhibitions have been reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, The New Yorker and The Village Voice.

This is Kantor / Feuer’s first exhibition. Opening reception September 17th from 6:00 – 9:00 pm. For more information about the gallery, please visit www.kantorfeuer.com.