Smack Mellon is pleased to present three solo exhibitions of Selin Balci, Tracey Goodman and Alison Owen. Using Smack Mellon as a type of archive for her installation, Species of Spaces, Alison Owen presents a taxonomy of objects which she has gathered from artists that have previously participated at Smack Mellon. Basing her installation on the opposite facing windows, Owen recreates the pattern of the window frames as shelves holding up the various collected items. A hand-drawn inventory book and installation notes outline the overlaps in materials and methods.

Disrupting the familiarity of Smack Mellon’s industrial architecture, Tracey Goodman poetically reimagines the gallery space filled with reconstructed dresses, window coverings, taxidermy birds, and Venetian plaster as sunlight on the floor; each element hand made.  In The small thread of days and sunlight, a title borrowed from Shirley Jackson’s tale A Visit, Goodman blurs the border between public and domestic, seen and unseen.

In Selin Balci’s bio-art installation Bordered World, 2,000 Petri dishes compose a three-dimensional kaleidoscopic world map representing the universal struggle for survival and dominance. Within each hand “painted” Petri dish, live molds and fungi are in an observable battle for limited resources.  Distinctive borders slowly form and new colonies develop during this microscopic feud.

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Stephen Levin, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Lambent Foundation, The O’Grady Foundation, Gilbert Mackay Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.

Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Inc., Richard J. Massey Foundation for the Arts & Sciences, The Robert Lehman Foundation, The Greenwich Collection Ltd, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., and Exploring The Arts.

Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.