“Wild Thing” will be up from April 15 through May 16, 2010
Opening reception Thursday April 15, 6-8pm
Nicelle Beauchene Gallery is pleased to announce Wild Thing, the first New York solo exhibition by Israeli artist Dana Levy.
For this exhibition, Levy considers the complexities and contradictions between the man-made world and our surrounding natural habitats. Specifically focusing on vegetation, both wild and cultivated, Wild Thing configures new tension to the age-old struggle of man vs. nature.
Levy’s video installation The Abandoning re-defines our sense of home as a temporary structure and exposes the vulnerability of architectural constructs. Focused on a neglected Greenwich Village building with interior and exterior overrun by climbing ivy, Levy films and animates this home site with natural growths to explore ideas of decay and renewal, chaos and order. Executed with a playfulness that is at once both academic and lyrical, Levy delivers a formal investigation of entropy with an allegorical edge.
Several short poetic verses, constructed from photographs taken of garden nameplates, reveal Levy’s savvy use of irony. These labels, with wildly imaginative titles (Tall, Dark and Handsome; Virgin, Super-Ego, etc.), anthropomorphize and objectify the plant life, while hinting at a nominal function. Paradoxical and satirical, these limericks suggest a back story to the video installation through their suggested narratives.
Dana Levy received her post-graduate degree from the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee, Scotland and her BA in Visual Art from Camberwell College of Art in London. She has had solo shows at Tavi Dresdner Gallery, Tel Aviv and the Haifa Museum of Art, Israel. Additionally, she has been included in group exhibitions at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Jewish Museum, Amsterdam & Brussels; and in major international film festivals. Levy lives and works in Israel.
Nicelle Beauchene Gallery
21 Orchard Street
New York, NY 10002
212.375.8043
www.nicellebeauchene.com
