Diana Shpungin

Artist Statement

Diana Shpungin’s work is dedicated to challenging ideas of drawing through sculptural and time-based forms. Her works are led by a heart-strong conceptualism, involving obsessive processes while exploring themes of memory, failure, loss, and repair, –employing optimism in a quest for empathy across identity lines.The use of graphite pencil is often the foundation of the work.

Diana Shpungin "Always Begin At The End" 2022 marble, graphite, pencil and mixed media Exhibition installation view Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY The exhibition centers around a marble tiled arena, a felled chandelier, a record player, seashells, chairs, chain link fencing, cast body parts, doors, cardboard boxes, a reconfigured American flag, and loose change add to the range of quotidian objects that the artist has carefully scattered throughout this sprawling stage and across the gallery walls. This exhibition features many objects made from cast paper, alongside combined found objects that the artist alters, construction materials, and a single hand-drawn pencil animation metaphorically smashed by rocks. Much of Shpungin’s works can be seen as “drawings” in the sense that they are literally covered in drawing’s most ubiquitous medium: graphite pencil. Shpungin painstakingly covers each object but does not obscure it, in a process that both masks and gives depth. photography: Etienne Frossard

Bio

Born in Riga, Latvia, Shpungin emigrated as a child to New York City. She received her MFA from The School of Visual Arts, NY and has exhibited extensively in both national and international venues including: The Bronx Museum; The Brooklyn Museum; Invisible Exports; Sculpture Center, NY; Smack Mellon, NY; The Aldrich Museum, CT; The Bass Museum, Miami; MASS MoCA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson; SiTE:LAB; Futura Center, Prague; Galerie Zurcher, Paris; and Tomio Koyama, Tokyo. Shpungin was awarded the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, the NYFA Fellowship in Sculpture and multiple grants from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In addition she has been awarded residencies from Art Omi, BAU at The Camargo Foundation, Bronx Museum AIM, MacDowell, and Yaddo among others. Shpungin’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, Flash Art, Hyperallergic, New York Magazine,The New York Times among many other publications. Shpungin has been an Assistant Professor at Parsons: The New School for Design for over a decade.

https://dianashpungin.com

Ruth Jeyaveeran

Artist Statement

My work is based on traditional material practices. Drawing from my experience as part of the South Asian diaspora, I use textiles to examine our shared history to confront feelings of alienation and dissociation. In my sculptures and installations, the boundary between human, animal, and flora dissolve to tell a story of isolation, migration, and evolution. Familiar shapes evoke our collective memory of early vessels, tools, and bones - objects once buried and forgotten, now restored through the ritual of felting. Each piece functions as an intimate excavation as the fibers shift and resettle creating unexpected marks that rise to the surface. The act of sewing, tying, and tangling fibers together, is an attempt to repair ruptured bonds between body, environment, and community. Wool is primal, spiritual, and bound to nature. Textiles, a source of warmth and shelter, offer a tactile antidote to our disenchantment with the modern world. I collaborate with the material and the process allowing long-forgotten truths to emerge.

Mama-Sita 2023 wool, yarn, flower petals 7ft x 2ft x 2ft

Bio

Born in Lusaka Zambia, and raised in the Midwest, Ruth Jeyaveeran lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her solo show, Soft Remains, was exhibited at Field Projects in 2023. Other recent exhibitions include, Felt Experience at the Brattleboro Museum, Communion, a solo installation at Main Window Dumbo and Amplify, a public sculpture at the Queens Botanical Garden. She has also exhibited at various venues in and around New York such as Ely Center of Contemporary Art, ABC No Rio, and The Border Project Space. Jeyaveeran has been awarded residencies at Lighthouse Works, Jentel Foundation, Willapa Bay, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, La Napoule Art Foundation, and PADA Studios. She has taught courses in textiles and fibers at Parsons School of Design, and she frequently leads workshops on felting and the therapeutic benefits of craft. Currently, Jeyaveeran is an Associate Professor of Textile Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

ruthjeyaveeran.com