Concurrent with Marc Handleman’s exhibition, Sikkema Jenkins will present new works by Elizabeth Neel in Gallery 2. In her exhibition entitled Leopard Complex, Neel continues to extend her recent exploration of relationships between paintings, images and 3-dimensional objects. Her manipulation of gesture in the painted mark, the selected image, and the positioned object, suggest an understanding of assemblage as both a specific interdisciplinary method and as a more general cultural practice of collecting forms regardless of their status as handmade object or repurposed article. In Neel’s work, the private and the public, the created and the found coexist in a precarious but dexterous manifest of control, or impulse management. Visual forms slide, tumble and pause, reframing one another, creating generative webs of reference and overlapping contextual suggestions. She often anchors her practice in the subject matter of the natural world, using organic systems and events as points of departure from which to examine the shifting meanings of ideas in relationship to forms.

The exhibition title, Leopard Complex, is a specific reference to a group of genetically related fur patterns in horses. The genes that control these seemingly chaotic spot patterns are encouraged in certain breeds, but as part of the mutation, the complex can result in severe abnormalities of the skin and vision. The spotting complex is named for it’s visual connection to the camouflaging patterns of a leopard’s coat.

Elizabeth Neel was born in 1975. She received her BA from Brown University and her MFA from Columbia University. Her most recent solo exhibition, Stick Season, took place in 2010 at Sculpture Center in Long Island City, NY. Other recent projects include group exhibitions at Pilar Corrias Gallery, London; Susanne Vielmetter Projects, Los Angeles; and The Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, NY.