moniquemeloche LES

Running concurrent with Armory Arts Week 2016, moniquemeloche will present a two-person exhibition of work by Sanford Biggers and Ebony G. Patterson at 2 Rivington Street, a storefront exhibition space located just steps from the New Museum. Within Patterson’s richly ornate works on paper and Biggers’ heavily manipulated patchwork quilts, material affinities abound. The synergy of this pairing is found in their ability to employ collage as a technique to converge seemingly disparate ideas and influences into one ground.

Initially focusing on the body to impart the paradoxical relationship between Jamaica’s traditional expectations of manhood and the flamboyant aesthetics of its dancehall culture, Ebony G. Patterson’s practice has expanded to consider larger binaries in contemporary Jamaican society.  New tapestries and mixed media works on paper from Dead Treez—some of which are currently on view at the Museum of Art and Design in New York—are an inquiry into the representation of violent deaths on social media. Seductive embellishments on the surface of these works belie the depth of the artist’s plight: to make visible that which is invisible. Utilizing the history of both African and Asian Diasporic culture, Sanford Biggers has developed a body of work that considers the familial and the mythological. Biggers’ ongoing investigation into the power of objects includes the use of quilts and fabrics as a platform to explore pattern and sacred geometry, non-linear notions of time and to question established histories.  Drips, tears, layering and pours on the surface of the quilts combine an unexpected range of cultural and formal references. His patterned grounds of patchwork quilts are overlaid with marks and superimposed with shapes and original symbolic imagery. This cultural sampling combines with his interest in found objects, the figure, and history. The resulting works are visually rich and layered with meaning. Biggers will debut a new quilt, monumental in scale, alongside new sculptures.