Callicoon Fine Arts is pleased to present pregnant patron penny pot, A.K. Burns’ first one-person exhibition opening on Saturday, March 3rd with a reception from 6-8pm and running through April 15th, 2012.

pregnant patron penny pot unites a series of sculptures with wall-mounted works comprised of colored fabric, inset with photographic reprints. The freestanding three-dimensional works are clad in Formica evoking figurative sculpture through the intimate scale of the body. Using a paired-down geometric vocabulary of delineation to form openings—the line, the edge and frame imply what is in, what is out, what passes through and what passes us by. These works congeal as skin and surface, the flesh-toned faux-marble aspires to and usurps the most solidly traditional of sculptural and architectural materials.

The sculptures converse with the series of image-on-fabric pieces while standing firm in material contrast, opening an associative space between production, reproduction and labor. The fabric works are scaled to the digital and printed page, reflecting the economy of easy handling and exchange. The images were sourced from The New York Public Library Picture Collection and are hung limply from the wall like flaccid picture planes wedged in place with pennies dug into the surface of the drywall. The reprints include a reproduction of Kurt Seligmann’s L’untrameable, a chair constructed from a figure in bondage, a prehistoric fertility stone carving, an archeological dig, hands shaping a pot on a spinning wheel, laborers on strike, a large stone monument, among other images.

The penny secured images form a unique kind of soft sculptural relief held in place by our smallest monetary unit, linking sculpture, the logic of built forms, to a larger cultural symbology, full of value and signification – the pregnant patron penny pot.

A.K. Burns (b. 1975) is currently exhibiting Touch Parade a 5-channel video installation at the Sculpture Center, NY, thru March 19 and at TAG, in The Hague, Netherlands, thru April 1st. Burns’ collaborative work with A.L. Steiner, a feature length video, Community Action Center was recently acquired by and will be screened at MoMA on Monday, March 12th. Past and future screenings include the Tate Modern, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Andy Warhol Museum. The work is distributed through Video Data Bank, and Burns and Steiner are currently organizing a national tour to LGBTQ Centers. Burns is also a founding member of W.A.G.E (Working Artists in the Great Economy) an artists’ advocacy group that is developing it’s certification program through a series of public forums produced in conjunction with Artists Space this Spring. Burns is co-editor of RANDY, an annual trans-feminist arts magazine. Collaborative performance and video work with Katherine Hubbard that explores queer esthetic and historical constructions was recently presented by the Brooklyn Museum. In addition to the video, Burns’ work is part of The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection at the Museum of Modern Art.