Julie Kumar - Practice

 

 For Mnemonic/Periodic, Julie created two hundred sculptures in a month and then locked her studio door. After four days, she tried to remember as many of those sculptures as she could, keeping track of her recollection with sketches and annotations. When she had exhausted her memory, she returned and installed the sculptures in a grid on the floor according to the order in which they were recalled. The forgotten sculptures were in another part of the room. She noticed that the relationship between the fury of creation and the torture of remembering was lost in the field she had created, reducing something ineffable to a mathematical and statistical visualization. This absurdist gesture is a playful, intricate microcosm of her artistic practice, which requires self-imposed rules in order to surprise and challenge preconceived notions.

A poster of the Periodic Table along with a sampling of these sculptures will be on exhibit in Practice at the Nave Gallery Annex this March/April. They are compelling explorations of form, material and space.

Julie Kamlesh Kumar was born in Anchorage, Alaska. She received her BA in Honors Visual Art from Brown University in 2007, where she was awarded the Anne Belsky Moranis Award for Excellence in Art. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Oregon College of Art and was one of six chosen by an international jury to be an Emerging Artist in Residence at the Pilchuck Glass School. In 2013 she graduated with an MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she was supported by the prestigious Presidential Scholarship and a juried Graduate Studies Grant. She has shown in numerous locations nationally, from the Rhode Island School of Design Museum to the Warwick Museum of Art. In November 2013 she was featured in Artscope magazine for her work in the show The Order of the Universe at Wheaton College in Massachusetts.

Kumar lives and works in Brooklyn. She is currently and Artist in Residence at SOHO20 Gallery in Chelsea, and is planning her solo show at This Friday or Next Friday Gallery, There are No People.

PRACTICE

 Nave Gallery Annex

March 12 - April 5, 2014

reception: Wednesday March 12, 6-8 pm

artist talk: Friday March 21, 7 pm

story slam: Monday March 31, 7 pm

Click here and here to learn more about Practice.

I will be introducing each of the six invited artists of Practice over the next couple of weeks leading up to the opening on March 12. Visit earlier posts about Caleb, Zsuzsanna, Stephanie and Hannah.