On Feb. 1 through Feb. 24, the Bushwick-based gallery ODETTA, created and run by artist Ellen Hackl Fagan, will be premiering a new exhibit called “Falling into Place”. This exhibit will showcase artists Daniel G Hill, Norma Márquez Orozco, and Mary Schiliro.
The artists have created their work by investigating the connection between abstraction and self-portrait. They have used themes such as the Earth’s and Moon’s gravitational pull to channel their own multi-faceted personalities engaging their artist and explorer tendencies.
With such a complex and specific theme, Fagan finds that the inspiration for such themes introduce themselves to her during her own studio practice. “My shows are based on ideas that come up in my own studio practice. My curiosity about the idea expands as I see artists’ works in their studios or their exhibitions, and then becomes a broader view of how other artists approach this same concept,” said Fagan. “I wanted to create a minimalist exhibition, one that brought their work together and offered each of them air and light for their work to be seen, right down to the most subtle details.”
Fagan is very busy and runs every aspect of her gallery: from curation to PR, to invoicing, to gallery prep and more. Her process is physical with a systematic approach that allows her own emotional connection to the piece to be represented in how they are viewed. “I aim for this with every exhibition and edit the work tightly to encourage this,” Fagan said. “I also love artists. We’re peers. I enjoy paying them when we have a sale. It’s all very good work, and brings me joy.”
“Falling into Place” is a second part to the 2018 exhibition “Las Gravitas”. Fagan found herself overwhelmed by the number of artists she housed for this exhibit, so one exhibit became two, “I had too many artists for ‘Las Gravitas,’ and decided to pair the color-focused works together in ‘Las Gravitas,’ and the minimalist artists for ‘Falling Into Place.’”
Daniel G. Hill is one of her selected artists for “Falling Into Place.” He was born in 1956 in Providence, R.I. He lives and works in New York City and has exhibited in the U.S. for nearly 40 years and, since 2010, in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Central America. He is a multi-disciplinary artist who has worked in sculpture, installation, painting, photography and digital media.
His work embodies the questions, “What am I looking at, how do I relate to it and how do I understand it?” Such self-reflexive viewing is part of the artist’s role, gently inviting the viewer of their capacity to wonder.
Norma Márquez Orozco was raised in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. The artist shares a common thread with Hill’s work investigating the way relationships emerge and evolve when elements like color, form, shape, lines, angle, and patterns are blended, shifted and layered.
She has curated exhibitions throughout New York and has hosted lectures and artist talks for the public. In 2001 she founded Floor4Art, an alternative space in West Harlem that houses artist’s studios and exhibition spaces aimed at producing, promoting and connecting artists.
All of Orozco’s work explores concepts of impermanence, perception, form, and balance through physical movement of the work itself in a lucid, game-like context, like puzzles.
Mary Schiliro‘s work has been exhibited across the United States, in New York, California, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Schiliro has created site-specific installations for PS122 Gallery, The Art Lot and Norte Maar in NYC, and most recently for the Imogen Holloway Gallery in Saugerties, NY.
She works with acrylic paint on mylar. This technique is process-based and expands the boundaries of painting by exploring alternative presentation methods. Using a dipping process, the work becomes a film of translucent, fluid color suspended in space. The paint coats the mylar, enabling the medium and support to become one. She is known to be deeply interested in the tangible and “real versus the ephemeral” and impermanent as metaphors for the human condition.
The idea of finding and curating such a specific show is daunting but these artists have been on Fagan’s radar for quite some time, “I have known these artists over the years working in New York City, both as a gallerist and as an artist.”
“Falling into Place” will be on exhibit, Feb. 1 through Feb. 24 at the ODETTA Gallery located at 229 Cook Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206.
All images courtesy of ODETTA.