Night Fever, One Halo by Arthur Simms (DG 2008, Juror) is currently on view at Martos After Dark. Comprised of works spanning two decades, this exhibition brings together seven pieces by Simms that will be on view, night and day, through the windows of Martos After Dark on the corner of Canal and Elizabeth Streets.
Mell (2003), created at the American Academy in Rome and the oldest work in the exhibition, is composed of wood, rope, wire, wheels and plastic. Bound together by pressure, Mell crosses sight-lines with the translucent Night Fever, One Halo. (2022), the only work created specifically for this installation. From the anonymity of found objects and raw materials: bottles, rope, a toy truck, to the specific intimacy of hair from the artist’s wife, the painter Lucy Fradkin, the works in the exhibition create a unique environment. Atomized again and again, the viewer’s attention shifts from object to object. Turning the corner from Canal to Elizabeth Streets and back, the works overlap in new ways like a participatory collage in the round.
Born in Saint Andrew, Jamaica (1961), Simms was inspired in early childhood by the improvisational constructed carts he saw transporting goods to and from the market. He has described his work as full of associations to his hybrid autobiography in America and Jamaica as well as surrealist techniques of unconscious assemblage and the Duchamp-ian readymade.
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