Invisible NYC is proud to host, Constructed Consciousness / Spiritualized Matter, a two person exhibit featuring the drawings of Denise DeSpirito and the photographs of Diana McClure.

Mixed-media artist, Denise DeSpirito (www.denisedespirito.blogspot.com) was born on Long Island and grew up in the suburbs of New York City. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Since graduating from the School of Visual Arts she has shown her work throughout the U.S. in over thirty galleries including Stay Gold Gallery in Brooklyn and New Image Art in West Hollywood, California. Recently Denise received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for her stay as an artist-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute.

Photographer and writer, Diana McClure (www.dianamcclure.com), originally from Boston, currently lives and works in Brooklyn. After graduating from Columbia University and The New School for Social Research where she received a Diamond Fellowship and her Masters degree, Diana has exhibited her work in numerous prestigious galleries through the U.S. Her photographs have been shown at the Philadelphia African American Museum, published in the Los Angeles Times, and were included in the juried Judy Chicago’s Envisioning the Future project. Diana’s writing has been published in such magazines as Art Asia Pacific, STUDIO: The Studio Museum in Harlem, and many others.

Denise’s drawings are created through multiple layers of architectural lines and whimsical color; eventually become a delicate bombardment with eerie, generally recognizable images which jump out at the viewer, a sensory experience closely connected with living in New York. Denise states, “traveling through the city in a single day, one moves through a thousand environments…watching pitbulls turn into Chihuahuas…and box trucks covered in art school graffiti morph into extravagant Hummers”. These drawings capture the seemingly disjointed pieces of urban life that seem to natural flow into one another while also examining the cityscapes from which they are inspired. Denise’s Zen-like approach to drawing free her to let the images guide her hand, and ultimately produce works that evoke a fresh landscape. Influenced by the excessives of New York City life and the drawing process itself, Denise’s current work uses minimal line to reference the myriad, excessive ima ges she encounters daily living in New York and through the media.

Diana’s inspiration for this show emerges from the transformation of energy into material form. The photographs document a month spent in Honolulu where she was struck by the constructed urban architecture and neighborhoods of an island usually envisioned as lush and tropical. Each photo is a striking statement, using shape and color to emphasize the meeting of the urban and natural conditions. The result is a two-dimensional photo which offers a juicy burst of what seems to be a window into a three-dimensional world. Metaphysics and intuitive action drive Diana’s process and approach to artistic production. The conceptual basis underlying her work rests in the notion of spiritual/human agency. She states, “[What] I sought to explore in this work, was how mental/spiritual/emotional energy manifests into structural form”.

The similar structural, visual, and spiritual quality of both the artists themselves and their work is monumental. The energy created through each woman’s specific urban, artistic vocabulary is heightened by the other’s presence ultimately creating a completely new structural push and pull.