Archived Exhibition
Susan York | Porcelain & Graphite
April 2 – May 9, 2009
Reception: Thursday, April 2, 2009, 5:00-7:00pm
Artist Biography

Originally recognized for her stacked sculptures of wafer thin porcelain, in the last several years Susan York has been working with graphite to luminous effect in large wall drawings and distinct works. Influenced by the Constructivist and De Stijl movements, she uses repetition, accumulation and the manifestation of visceral tension as the basis for her work. In describing York’s porcelain work in Art in America, Sarah S. King wrote that her “striking body of work and systematic methods . . . adroitly provoke tensions between space and form.”

Until Angle of Repose, York’s 2005 exhibition at Braunstein/Quay Gallery, she had made her graphite sculptures as floor pieces solely for the site-specific graphite rooms she created in museums. But for the 2005 show, she made a small graphite cube and hung it on the wall. This discovery led to her current body of discrete graphite objects.

York associates her art practice with Zen Buddhism and her art practice becomes a meditation. In artforum.com [July, 2008], Blake Gopnik wrote,”Her works are not so much about the space they take up as the substance this space contains and what it means. In York’s art, that is, what you see is positively not what you see, or get.

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