The Idea of Alchemy: The Assemblage Work of Ellen Burnett

Born in New York City to parents who lived through the Great Depression, Ellen Burnett learned frugality at a young age. Trips to the MoMa with her mother introduced her to the assemblage work of Joseph Cornell and Louise Nevelson. A particular favorite was The Palace at 4 a.m. by Alberto Giacometti. Decades later, a friend of Burnett’s showed up at her hundred-year-old home with a box of construction debris. Though it was intended as firewood, Burnett found herself unable to burn certain pieces. Over the week, she started pairing the wood with unique objects throughout her home, which she had been collecting throughout her lifetime, slowly embracing the medium she had loved as a child.

Burnett’s pieces, assembled with found wood and scraps of metal, become captivating displays, at once ordered and disordered, arranged in palettes of smooth gray and welcoming brown. “It is the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing,” Burnett says, “from the detritus, the leavings of this culture, this society that discards so much.”

Burnett currently lives and works in Weehawken, New Jersey.

Exhibition Dates: January 21, 2017 – February 10, 2017

Reception: Thursday January 26, 2017, 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat 11-6

Gallery Location: 530 West 25th St, Chelsea, New York

Event URL: http://www.agora-gallery.com/artistpage/Ellen_Burnett.aspx

Featured Artists:

Emerging Visions

Jian Jun An  |  Robert Ellison  |  David Gista  |  Roger DiCamillo  |  Ellen Burnett  |  Gabriele Golissa  |  Andrew Glass

About the Exhibition

The Possibilities of "Emerging Visions"

Opening this January, Emerging Visions is a lively group exhibition that offers fresh takes on small details and technical practices. This exhibition includes seven exceedingly thoughtful artists who work with a variety of media in innovative ways. There is the artist who assembles his pieces from recovered panels painted by other people. Is he a sculptor or a painter? There is the artist who mixes traditional flat media with found objects. Is she a collagist, sculptor, painter, or something else? These artists are interdisciplinary chameleons dedicated to their craft and loath to adhere to any rules.

Among the work on display are four approaches to landscape: an exploration of the countryside with attention to texture, a creation of water using strips of color and wide perspectives, a selection of photographs that present the sky as a living thing, and  an architect's vision of real-world buildings with a dreamy flair. There is abstraction created from minimalist layering of color as well as a wildly eclectic marriage of objects and lines. Rounding out the exhibition's impressive range is an acrylic portraitist who conjures faces out of undulating, free-form lines.