Feeling, a verb, is also a noun. Many English speakers understand that adding the -ing suffix to a word can denote action, but to add -ing can also form a verbal noun. Sewing Machine, Jumping Jack, A Reaping . A Feeling is a thing that helps us to interpret the world around us. Cognitive and emotional reactions form what our brains understand to be reality. What happens though, when our brains switch feelings rapidly? When a feeling turns into another feeling? When a thought becomes a feeling? What happens when a feeling falls apart?
Sun You presents a new paneled work, dotted with a landscape of fragmented forms above a watercolored floral scene. Also featured is a modest wire sculpture held together with magnets and pins on a plinth. A delicate balancing act, the arrangement of wires and found objects recall ikebana, or kothkoji (flower arrangement). Similarly, the operatives in Paolo Arao’s stitched and stretched fabric canvases come together in a seductive composition that float between formal abstraction and material. “Imperfections” in the work present themselves as exposed seams and quavering geometries.Jeanine Oleson’s two included works, Can you feel it? and Xallarap explore sensory communication of sound, sight and touch scaling the body to the larger world. Oleson’s work uses materials like copper and a conch shell to make these connections, finding ways to transmit through conduction and illusion.
Kristine Woods brings a new sculpture and prints to A Feeling Falls Apart, along with papier-mache works from her Stanza series. Over Sleeping Lips, Woods’ new sculpture comprised of felted sheep’s wool, is held aloft and spans the width of the ceiling. Installed in the gallery’s storefront window, it steps with the foot traffic of the Bowery and recalls the founding steps of the legendary throughway.
Respectively, this group of artists represents feeling in atrophy and on the brink of collapse, and in this stage, new and expansive feelings are formed.
