Opening reception: June 13th, 2024
Location: 195 Chrystie Street, NYC 10002
Hours: Monday – Friday, 10 am – 6 pm, Saturday 12-5 pm & Sunday by appointment
Contact: | 917.292.6921

 
Voltz Clarke Gallery is pleased to present Dear Life, a solo show by Stephanie Patton

In the unprecedented and current uncertain times, one may often wonder, “What’s next”? The exhibition, Dear Life, tries to make sense of the world today through a variety of relief sculpture, photographs, and video. The solo show focuses on the intensity of what we, as a society, have experienced in recent years, what we can’t “unsee,” and the internal struggles we face to process and heal together.

Humor plays an important role in Stephanie Patton’s work. The sculptor often uses it as a way to communicate challenging experiences and emotional concerns, including mental and physical health, healing, and protection. Mattress quilting suggests ideas related to birth, death, intimacy, relationships, illness, and rest. Coupled with words or phrases, which often have multiple meanings, the quilted fabric is meant to bring a humorous yet poignant conceptual message to the viewer. Patton is interested in using these text pieces as a way to reflect upon self-preservation as well as the incredibly fast, unpredictable and often tumultuous current climate. She also uses vinyl in her sculptural reliefs for its physical properties as well inherent ‘protection’ references to mental and physical health. The impenetrable nature of these pieces offers a comforting and self-protective physical and emotional awareness to the viewer. Patton’s work often addresses psychological themes while exploring the relationship between humor and personal therapies in addition to investigating aspects of human emotion.

Born in New Orleans, LA, Stephanie Patton is a multi–media artist. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting from the University of Louisiana in Lafayette and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Patton has shown her work nationally and internationally including shows at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Elizabeth Houston Gallery and Voltz Clarke Gallery in New York; the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Louisiana ArtWorks, the Contemporary Art Center and Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, LA; the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, LA; the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, the Galveston Art Center in Texas and Galerie Patricia Dorfmann in Paris, France.

Patton has received several grants including a Career Advancement Grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts in 2009 and 2012. She has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, the Santa Fe Art Institute and the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. In 2019 Stephanie was a South Arts Fellowship Recipient for the state of Louisiana and a Finalist for the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art with The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC.