Elisa D’Arrigo (CRF 2013, Juror) is part of a two person exhibition opening tomorrow, April 1st, at Five Myles in Brooklyn. The show will be up through May 7th, 2023.

This exhibition presents Elisa D’Arrigo’s sculptural work from the 1990s and early 2000s alongside recent prints by Mildred Beltré. Since 2010 D’Arrigo has made and exhibited ceramic work that explores improvisational process, thickly glazed surfaces, and animated sculptural form within the context of the ceramic vessel. A strong correlation exists between the earlier mixed media works in the exhibition at FiveMyles and the artist’s current ceramic sculptures. The most obvious continuance lies in the mysteries each one of D’Arrigo’s works implies. Are they artifacts left behind by an earlier, alien civilization? Are they emotions transformed into clay, rope, wire, cloth or stitches? These works very much engage us with the physical process of art making: the relationship between labor and time, the tension between weight and gravity.

The most recent of these works, the wall piece Time and Time Again (2005, image pictured here) takes its strength from the irregularity of the grid, the anxious restlessness of thousands of stitches and the soothing shades of the black and gray of the fabric, repurposed from clothing worn by D’Arrigo’s family over the years. It is the relentless action of the hand making these stitches that adds the weight of time to this work. 

An earlier work, the floor sculpture First Frost 2 (1992), with its dense bud-like center and trailing stem approximates a botanical fragment lying on a field; something both from nature and hand-made. Its exposed ribbed structure of coated wire looks organic, like woven vines. But the mystery of its origin is lightened by the hand that lets you feel its work – patting the clay in place, entwining a part of the sculpture with rope. For each of the five sculptures in the exhibition the hand is their great collaborator. 

Learn more here.