Surface March ArtWalk

Saturday, March 10th
6:00-8:00pm

Surface
Jessie Vogel

Surface is an exhibition of work spanning from 2012- 2018, showing my love of material and their playful compositions. My sculptures and installations begin by trying to decipher the visual grammar of materials. Through our senses, we all have an intuitive understanding of the material world around us. As an artist who works physically, touch is an integral part of my process when I choose certain mediums. I call this tactability. Tactability is my word to characterize the mental and physical sense of touch. I am interested in our desire or avoidance to investigate through touch. With this in mind, I want to bring the intuitive understanding of materials into a realm that is imaginary.

I use psychology, perception of reality, science fiction, childlike humor and the visual grammar of materials to create objects and installations that are familiar but at the same time out of the ordinary. These concepts are often reflected as corporeal specimens that create bizarre and sometimes humorously beautiful arrangements. My shapes and forms are intentionally awkward, as I am investigating the balance and discomfort between the grotesque and the beautiful. I feel that my objects and installations fall in-between these two states to create a specific sensory space of guilt and seduction. They can seem distorted and perhaps simplified visual worlds, but my goal is to bring architecture, object, and viewer together.

Bio
Jessie Vogel is a mixed media sculptor and installation artist focusing on the visual grammar and rhetoric of materials. She was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and received her BFA in 2008 from Wake Forest University. In 2012, she received her MFA in sculpture from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is a new mother and a current artist in residence at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, showing in Louisiana, Boston, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Japan, and Mexico.