Klaus von Nichtssagend is proud to present a two-person show of works by Keiko Narahashi and Lizzie Scott. The show will feature new painted wall works by Scott and ceramic sculptures by Narahashi. It opens on January 12 and will be on view through February 17, 2024.
Lizzie Scott’s paintings could be seen as soft sculptures. Her padded, quilt-like forms are constructed from layers of polyester batting, crinoline, fur, and traditional canvas. They suggest the shape of buttons, grates, construction barriers or manhole covers and reflect the everyday objects of the artist’s urban environment. To these substrates, Scott applies thin washes of paint until abutting fields of color achieve a level of balance with areas of exposed canvas. Panels of loose fabric are cut and stitched back together like punk rock garments or exposed upholstery. Colorful threads create drawn lines and performative borders between painted sections. The work is at once elegant and gritty, constructed and painted with purpose but allowing for detours and improvisation. The resulting tactile compositions can be experienced as one might navigate a city block – full of noise, obstacles, color and life.
Keiko Narahashi’s ceramic sculptures address three-dimensionality from a painterly perspective. Narahashi experiments in the studio and follows forms through various iterations, shifting scale and color, and between abstraction and loose representation. Several of her works often have flat picture planes, with a front, back, and sides as seen from different angles. Other, more traditional vessel forms contain faces, silhouettes, landscapes, or radiating chromatic shifts. She finds unexpected results with glazes, which are created through multiple applications and refirings. This balance points to the subject at the core of the work, the intersection of experience between ourselves and the environment around us.
Lizzie Scott received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts, her BA from Brown University, and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program. She has had solo exhibitions at John Tevis Gallery (Paris), Galerie Gris (Hudson), The Jersey City Museum, and LMAK Projects (NYC). Her performances, sculptures and paintings have appeared in group shows including at Zürcher Studio (NYC) Rachel Uffner Gallery (NYC), Kate MacGarry Gallery (London), Ohio University Art Gallery (Athens), Bennington College (VT), The Brooklyn Museum, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. From 2009-2016 Scott ran The Total Styrene Experience, a roving performance laboratory. Her work has been featured and reviewed in numerous publications including Artforum and The New York Times. Scott has been a MacDowell Colony fellow and a New York Foundation for the Arts sponsored artist. Her work is in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art, and the RISD Museum.
Keiko Narahashi was born in Tokyo and grew up in North Carolina. She lives and works in New York City and Woods Hole, Massachusetts. She received a BFA from Parsons School of Design, and an MFA in Painting from Bard College. Recent exhibitions include Jason McCoy Gallery, Miles McEnery Gallery, Brennan & Griffin, Deli Gallery, 106 Green, Eric Firestone Gallery, and Longhouse Projects. Narahashi was a recipient of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Studio Grant (2005) and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Grant in Painting (2006). Her work has been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Vogue, The Brooklyn Rail, and The New York Times.
