Mixed Greens
531 West 26th Street, 212-331-8888
Chelsea
February 11 - March 13, 2010
Reception: Thursday, February 11, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site
Mixed Greens is pleased to present Christina Mazzalupo’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Stomachache is a multimedia exhibition quantifying and categorizing the eight weeks leading up to her 40th birthday.
Over the past six years, various alternative healthcare practitioners have requested Mazzalupo keep daily journals listing food intake and physical symptoms. This tracking had mixed results: some relationships offered clarity while others produced only confusion.
During the summer of 2009, a few months before her 40th birthday, Mazzalupo decided to once again record her daily routines. This time, however, she expanded her subject matter to include emotions experienced, medications and supplements taken, fears, and travels. She also noted various decisions and significant topics that arose.
For the show, the results of her extensive, pseudoscientific data collection are translated into eight drawings—one to represent each week. These are accompanied by interpretive oil paintings and sketches, along with a video of over one hundred words associated with the endeavor. Charts from the collected data (pie and others) exist as unique clay sculptures.
The objective of the project was to determine whether looking so scrupulously at the minutia in her life would provide a logical method of problem solving or become the source of greater disorder. As Mazzalupo puts it, “we often feel a compulsion to plunge into our habits and let the chatter of our minds run wild, to dissect and reassemble in order to figure it all out.” Mazzalupo engages and chronicles this running wild and all of its by-products. The result is a darkly comic look at the act of paying attention.
Christina Mazzalupo received her MFA from New York University (1997). Upon graduation, her work was featured in a White Room at White Columns, New York City (1998). Since then, she has shown in group exhibitions in many cities including Monroe, LA; Brighton, England; Olympia, WA; New Paltz, NY; Purchase, NY; Santa Monica, CA; Houston, TX; Fairfield, CT; and Badajoz, Spain. Her first solo exhibition was with Mixed Greens, New York City (2004).