Alyson Shotz: Light, Sound, Space
January 23–June 22, 2005The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum presented Light, Sound, Space, a solo exhibition of site-specific sculpture by artist Alyson Shotz at The Aldrich from January 23 through June 22, 2005.
In her most ambitious work to date, Shotz created Shape of Space, a shimmering wall of light consisting of 18,000 plastic oval Fresnel lenses that measures thirty-eight-feet long and over fourteen-feet high. Originally created for Rice University's Art Gallery in Houston, the work features thousands of different-size ovals cut from sheets of Fresnel lens plastic by Shotz and a crew of assistants which were then stapled together. Flat on one side and ridged on the opposite side, the Fresnel lens was named for its eighteenth-century inventor Augustin Jean Fresnel (1788-1827), and was originally put to use as a lens for lighthouses in 1822. Shotz's lenses build on the lens's reflective characteristics by imprinting concentric circles of prisms to further bend and refract light, capturing and magnifying its surroundings.
In addition to the indoor work, the outdoor sculpture Mirror Fence was installed in the Museum's Cornish Family Sculpture Garden. This outdoor work is a 130-foot-long, standard-size picket fence, faced in mirror. Shotz designed the artificial structure to reflect its natural environs, so as to subsequently disappear into its surroundings. Mirror Fence was on view from November 2004 through May 2005 as the third sculpture in the Museum's Main Street Sculpture Project series.
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Alyson Shotz, Forced Bloom 2, 2004, Lambda print, 60 x 50, Edition of 4, Courtesy of the artist and Carolina Nitsch Editions, New York
Alyson Shotz, The Shape of Space, 2004, Cut plastic Fresnel lens sheets, staples, 175 x 456, Collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Photo by Steven Needham
Alyson Shotz, The Shape of Space (detail), 2004, Cut plastic Fresnel lens sheets, staples, 175 x 456, Collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo by Steven Needham
About the Artist
Born in Glendale, Arizona, in 1964, Alyson Shotz received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 1987, and an MFA from University of Washington, Seattle, in 1991. Recent solo exhibitions include Simple Forms (2004) at Ingalls & Associates Fine Arts, Miami; Alyson Shotz: A Slight Magnification of Altered Things (2003) at The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; and Alyson Shotz (2003) at Derek Eller Gallery, New York. Group exhibitions include Yard: an Exhibition about the Private Landscape that Surrounds Domestic Architecture (2003) at Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY; Larger Than Life: Women Artists Making it Big (2003) at Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA; and Mirror Mirror (2002) at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) North Adams. In 2004, Shotz received a New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship in Painting and a Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Fellowship. Shotz lives and works in Brooklyn.Top of page: Alyson Shotz, Mirror Fence, 2003, Acrylic, wood, aluminum, hardware, 138 feet x 3 feet, Collection of Cecily Horton, Houston, Courtesy Mixed Greens, New York
