Mixed Greens, Glow Room Project Space
531 West 26th Street, 212-331-8888
Chelsea
March 29 - June 2, 2012
Reception: Thursday, March 29, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site
Mixed Greens is delighted to present a site-specific window installation by Viviane Rombaldi Seppey. To help us emerge from winter, the windows will be transformed into a mosaic of bright pinks, yellows, and oranges, in swirling sunset patterns. Using only repurposed plastic shopping bags, Rombaldi Seppey re-contextualizes found objects into illusionary stained glass.
Viviane Rombaldi Seppey is known for her multi-disciplinary work using ordinary materials. Phonebooks, fashion magazines, bindi dots, discarded paper, and maps her father collected throughout his lifetime, offer the foundation for her artworks. According to Rombaldi Seppey, these objects “define the place I am in, its characteristics and meanings, as well as my identity within a larger cultural context.” For instance, the series, A Sense of Place, uses maps to create circulatory systems referring to genealogy, displacement, and a search for belonging.
In Kaleidoscope, Rombaldi Seppey’s collection of disposable plastic bags reconsiders the value of discarded objects and speaks to the relationship between the natural and the manmade. Only upon close inspection of the Mixed Greens windows does one notice Chinese and Roman characters on a yellow fragment—a small but poignant clue that the material used is not glass. Through a beautiful sunset pattern, Rombaldi Seppey reminds us of our location in the heart of New York City and makes us stop for a moment to notice the reflection of light in the glittering facades of thousands of buildings—nature making its way through the concrete.
Viviane Rombaldi Seppey is a New York-based artist with a BFA from the National Art School in Sydney, Australia, and an MFA from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology at LASALLE-SIA, College of the Arts in Singapore. She has shown in numerous New York institutions including Smack Mellon, Bronx Museum, Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Wave Hill, Lower East Side Printshop, and Carriage House at the Islip Art Museum. In 2009 and 2011 she received grants through the Dame Joan Sutherland Fund, from the American Australian Association. She was a Lower East Side Printshop Key Holder Resident, AIM Artist in the Marketplace participant, and a resident at Bundanon Trust in Australia.