This fall, artists Corin Hewitt and Molly McFadden will collaborate on the first project at Recess, a new art space at 41 Grand Street in Soho, NY. Recess invites resident artists to use its storefront space as studio, exhibition venue and grounds for experimentation. Wednesday through Saturday, the space is open to the public free of charge.

Hewitt and McFadden have approached the unique program at Recess as an impetus to merge production with performance, inviting the public to approach their practice as it evolves. The result is a production of shared temporal and visual experience between artists and audience, obscuring the distinction between studio and stage.

During September and October the artists will construct two elongated parallel workshops, visible through adjacent apertures. The joined yet discrete spaces inside Recess will appear identical, both employing visual techniques of forced perspective. In November, the artists will begin working inside their built spaces. At fixed intervals, Hewitt and McFadden will switch rooms to replicate the other’s previous output. The artists will photograph their work as it is completed, using the photographs as a tool for the next cycle of reproduction.

The duplicate spaces will develop incrementally along the same trajectory, but as the artists work, inconsistencies of touch, skill, and reaction will cause the workshops to diverge as a set of mutations emerge. Approaching an increasingly disconcerting, imperfect effect, the artists will engage the practice of partnership while confronting the impossibility of creating in true parallel.

This is the first public collaboration between Hewitt and McFadden, and their respective investigations of public space and private life generate a dynamic review of human interaction. As the relationship between the artists, the public, and the space develops, the constructed environment will become progressively more complex. These idiosyncrasies of interface, generated by process-based, active creative practice will set the tone for future projects at Recess.

About the Artists

Corin Hewitt and Molly McFadden live and work in Brooklyn. Hewitt was born in 1971 in Burlington, Vermont, and received his MFA from the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College (2007), and his BA from Oberlin College (1993). He attended the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Karlsruhe, Germany (1996) and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine (2004). Hewitt currently has solo exhibitions at The Seattle Art Museum in Seattle, Washington (through October 8th, 2009) and The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (through November 22nd, 2009). For three months in 2008-9, the Whitney Museum of American Art hosted Hewitt’s solo exhibition “Seed Stage,” in which the artist built a theatrical workspace inside of the Museum’s lobby gallery.

Molly McFadden was born in 1981, in Oxford, Ohio, and received her BFA from Oberlin College in 2004. McFadden is committed to integrating her artistic pursuits into her everyday life. She has long observed the ways in which individuals choose to represent themselves through the staging of objects. Intrigued by the ubiquitous private and public window displays throughout the city, McFadden has constructed displays in her own apartment window that have become a source of fascination in her neighborhood.