/ IMAGE GALLERY /
/ ABOUT THE EXHIBIT /
Redux Contemporary Art Center is proud to present Ice Storm, featuring new works by artist Carson Fox. A lecture given by the artist will be held at Redux on Friday, September 17 at 5:30pm followed by an opening reception from 6-9pm. Ice Storm will be on display at Redux Contemporary Art Center from September 17 – October 30, 2010. Admission is free. The opening reception on September 17 will be open to the public and will include free beverages and light hors d’oeuvres.
Working across media, Fox produces prints, installations, and sculptures. In Redux’s show, the gallery will be transformed into a winter wonderland. Fox has created cast resin sculptures of snowflakes, icicles and snowdrifts. This body of work is a meditation upon themes of an alternate nature, one that is created in the mind as a reassurance against the inevitability of death. In this controllable world, Fox can prevent icicles from melting, create larger than life snowflakes in preposterous configurations, and freeze flowers as they bloom. In the fantasy of artificiality, the fleeting moment is held in stasis and death is denied.
Typically, Fox makes art out of materials for which she feels a heartfelt attraction, privileging goods and techniques that answer the needs of the work. This has resulted in sculpture and installations produced in a range of materials including; silk flowers, artificial hair, wire, or cast resin.
One installation is comprised of over 120 suspended clear, cast resin icicles, whose sharp tips dangle precariously above the viewer’s head. The work attempts to mix retinal delight with a sense of dread. “The image of the icicle was taken from a vivid dream I had of my mother shortly after her death,” says Fox, “We met together outside of my family house, where the landscape was covered with icicles. I grew anxious as I realized the melting ice symbolized the limit of our time together, and soon both she, and the icicles were gone.”
Another major body of work is comprised of faceted clouds of snowflakes. Each snowflake was cast individually and then assembled into complex formations to create both freestanding snowdrifts and creeping formations. The compositions suggest an exaggerated fantasy of nature where the viewer can behold the individual beauty of each flake in sharp focus and keep it there without fear of it melting and slipping away.
The installation Silver Field is created from thousands of silver and clear cast resin flowers, which spread organically across the walls. Flower forms have dominated much of Fox’s sculpture over the past few years because of their relationship to memorials. Here, she uses the flowers to honor her mother’s memory, and to commemorate others she has lost over the past ten years.
Ice Storm will be on display at Redux Contemporary Art Center from September 17 – October 30, 2010. Admission is free and open to the public.
Artist Lecture: Friday September 17, 5:30pm
Opening: Friday September 17, 6-9pm
On View: September 17 – October 30, 2010
About Carson Fox
American artist Carson Fox was born in Oxford, Mississippi, the small Southern hometown of William Faulkner. Named for novelist Carson McCullers, Carson's work is produced from a heritage of American Southern gothic tradition that relies heavily on the imprint that individual experience has on the artist.
Carson Fox received her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and her BFA from University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Working across media, Fox produces prints, installation, and sculpture. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of The Museum of Arts and Design, The Royal Museum of Belgium, the Noyes Museum of Art, the Newark Public Library, the Jersey City Museum, the Morris Museum of Art, the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum, the New Jersey State Museum, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, Colorado, Claire Oliver Gallery, New York, O. K. Harris Gallery, New York, the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, Wales, the Brunswiker Pavilion Kiel, Kiel, Germany, the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, Delaware, and the Association Mouvment Art Contemporain, Chamalieres, France. Fox has received grants from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Mid Atlantic Art Foundation, a Willem Emil Cresson Award, and a New Jersey Print and Paper Fellowship at the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper. Fox lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
