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04.11-10.12.2022
Apple Red Cranberry House
Bortolami
New York





Bortolami is pleased to present a two-person exhibition with Lena Henke and Michael Craig-Martin in the Upstairs. Staged in a former loft converted into a gallery space, the show combines the interiors of home with the outside world.

In this unique pairing, the two artists’ off-kilter, vividly multi-colored sculptures and paintings offer imaginative approaches to quotidian household objects. Craig-Martin’s sleek acrylic paintings of idealized household sundries, fruit, and flora meet Henke’s miniaturized houses and ceramic lily pads, along with her rubber-coated, 3-D milled kitchen appliances.

Henke’s practice, as put by author Carlos Kong, “[reimagines] the embodied experience of space.” Her three series of works are linked by her ongoing research in landscape design, urban planning, and architecture. The floor-based ceramic houses glazed in primary colors replicate a surrealistic piece of utopian architecture–Pier Franceso Orsini’s Leaning House, constructed in 1552, as part of the infamous Garden of Bomarzo, a verdant complex of grotesque and fantastical sculpture. Henke’s new wall-mounted, ceramic lily pads likewise relate to her interest in sculpture gardens and landscape architecture, originating from her exploration of Roberto Burle Marx’s iconic natural designs.

Since the late 1970s, Michael Craig-Martin has rendered everyday, mass-produced items in clear, isometric forms. This practice began as an exercise in reduction–the most basic gesture he could conjure was to draw a single object. He sought to draw not just an object, but also a version existing between its absolute generalization and a specific iteration.

As technology has evolved over the last four decades, so too have Craig-Martin’s subjects and processes. Craig-Martin drew the items by hand, then with black crepe tape in the 70s, and now works digitally, isolating the forms in acrylic on aluminum resulting in sleek, colorful paintings. His color choices– which serve as a vehicle for aesthetic judgment given the ready-made nature of his subjects–verge on artificial. Cans, forks, buckets, and work gloves appear bright magenta, turquoise, and purple, virtually disrupting their identities.

In 2020, Craig-Martin began drawing organic forms including flowers, fruit, and vegetables. As an acute observer of the ordinary, he posits that these images are “objects that we make, the ordinary objects of use, the objects of daily life, that is the greatest record of who we are...”. These images follow a circuitous evolution that reflects the current moment at any given time. His works depicted only analog items (shoes, chairs, utensils), progressing to those of a digital age (calculators, laptops, and iPhones), and only now reverting to the rich plant life that existed well before the advent of any of these man-made technologies. Though these newer subjects may be ephemeral, they too are distributed for consumption and permeate our daily lives.

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