Elana Herzog: NEW/NOW

By attaching found textiles—often shredded bedspreads and other fabrics—to walls using thousands of judiciously placed metal staples, the artist creates patterns of color and form that look like three-dimensional colored lines. It is as if the lines have come alive and have weight and substance. Herzog’s creations are further dramatized because once she has affixed the textiles to the walls, she proceeds to rip away some of the parts and thus there is the evidence left exposed where the fasteners once were. Her work is part performance because the creative phase is punctuated by the ebb and flow of application, the yin and yang of her creative process.

Herzog has admired New Britain native Sol LeWitt, the late genius of contemporary conceptual art, and also Frank Stella, who pioneered large explosive three-dimensional painting. However, unlike these artists, she has a strong affinity for textiles and often uses cheap, even tacky materials. She describes her work as follows:

“My work negotiates a thin line between attraction and repulsion, pain and pleasure, vulgar and sublime. I am fascinated by the way form is generated by growth and decay, construction and destruction. My work has a relationship to Modernism which is both reverent and irreverent…To the extent that I operate from a position of alienation, my relationship to both high and low culture remains vicarious. Site-specific projects are a large part of my practice. Each site has its challenges: formal, conceptual, and practical. Curiosity and desire confront the demands of the physical and institutional world—space, time, and resources.”

NEW/NOW
Elana Herzog