For Katie Bell, the sculptures in her site-specific installation act as marks, strokes, and fields of color, creating a painting language in architectural scale. Smack Mellon’s industrial interior—24-foot wall, steel columns, and cement floor—serves as the support for this sculptural painting. Made up of found, manipulated, and crafted objects, Bell’s work questions what comprises our visual landscape and how the artificial is often disguised as natural to give it an aura of grandeur. Included are discarded hot tub fragments clad in faux marble and fake rocks from a department store window display. In this immense rubble, the artist imagines what future ruins might look like, an environment in which the natural and the fabricated have become so inextricably merged that stone, fiberglass, and plastic are no longer distinguishable from one another.
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 M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Robert Lehman Foundation, Iorio Charitable Foundation, Select Equity Group 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 New York Community Trust, The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Jerome Foundation, The Greenwich Collection Ltd, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., Brooklyn Arts Council, and Exploring The Arts.
A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
