Anna Sew Hoy’s, “look-see” Opening Tonight @ Renwick Gallery 6-8 PM November 14 – January 9, 2009

Anna Sew Hoy look-see November 14 – January 9, 2009

Renwick Gallery is pleased to present look-see, Anna Sew Hoy’s first solo exhibition at the gallery.

“Consider that knowledge begins with the body. It is acquired by putting the body into the world, letting that body experience, and then learning from the experience. An engagement of the mind is hatched from the body: learning by doing. As a sculptor, my physical interaction with materials, and my daily manual labor, are processes of thought.

When I close my eyes, I feel the weight of my head and arms, and my feet pressing into the ground. I open my eyes to assess and interpret the sculptures, but where is the physicality of this act of sight? Am I a computer that is merely reading, recording, observing? Can I feel with my eyes, through the memory of touch?

The mirrors in these sculptures reflect your sneakers and a piece of the floor. Through them, one looks obliquely, at the edge of a sculpture and where it overlaps another. The installation is a collection of fragments and crossing sightlines. Compositions are framed and then slide away as you move through the room.

The steel sculptures stand in as Victorian portrait ovals, vanity mirrors and magnifying glasses. The jeans are snaky, or merely draped, or they are a fat leg, stuffed into clothing. The mirror-blobs are dense masses on wheels, a caveman’s monitor. Fashion does not play as much a role here as image, seeing, and being seen. Sometimes, views are obstructed, or you get lost in the texture of surfaces. Your presence in the room is always framed and reflected, fragmented and refracted, but instead of your face reflected in the mirror, you see the wall, or another person.

In this work, a body may move through the ellipses, peek inside, be in-between and around the mirror-blobs, step over the bulging denim. The act of seeing has become a process of moving the body through the constellation of blobs, mirrors and ellipses. Here is a situation where viewer is actor, on a platform of frames, reflection and mass, set to be experienced from every vantage point.” –Anna Sew Hoy