Soapbox Gallery is pleased to present Rat-tat-tat, a solo exhibition by New York-based artist Michelle Carollo.

Michelle Carollo’s multi-disciplinary practice – painting, sculpture, drawing and installation – grows out of a process based on Modernist ideals: simplifying form, eliminating ornament, and arranging pure color. She invents her visual language with the use of found materials, geometric shapes and three-dimensional space to create her installations. For her first exhibition at the gallery, Carollo pairs a selection of drawings with an installation designed for the Soapbox window to create a fluid dialogue between the two media, using the repetition of forms to create a tension between order and chaos.

Carollo’s installation is a quirky, mousetrap-like structure with no apparent function. Rat-tat-tat sets the stage with the use of bright colors and industrial objects for casual pedestrians to stop, view and take in the nonsensical contraption’s many forms. Her work requires one to take their time in order to view all the different elements of the installation as well as to see how she transforms functioning objects into a non-functioning entity. The Soapbox window, which directly faces the fault line of the future Ratnerville, permits Carollo to bring her installations into a public forum creating a mixture of public art, street art and conventional fine art practices.

Carollo’s drawings, while autonomous, act almost like preparatory works for her installations. She concentrates on certain elements found in her installations and expands on them in her drawings combining quick hand gestures and hard edge geometry. The drawings take on many forms such as spiraling towers and water-burst fire hydrants. They give the viewer a more intimate view into her thought process.

Michelle Carollo lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Currently, she is one of the twenty- three artists selected by the Jamaica Center for the Arts Studio LLC program, 2010-2011 and just finished a residency with the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, The Space Program in August 2009.