XIN SONG | MARIA STABIO
June 6 - June 29
Opening reception: Thursday, June 8, 6-8pm
MARIA STABIO
XIN SONG
The gallery is delighted to present a two-artist exhibition with Xin Song and Maria Stabio. This is the gallery's first time exhibiting works by the two women artists, who will display works in cut and hand-sewn fabric and acrylic on canvas paintings, respectively. Both artists share an interest in layered shapes, patterns, and colors, as well as the exploration of cultural experience that is both personal and far-reaching.
Song's hand-sewn fabric compositions include rectangular cloth backings embellished by smaller cut pieces of textiles in various shapes that she arranges into patterns. The artist is inspired by a range of decorative and quilting traditions, including those of China, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas. Cut fabrics from garments and textiles used by the women in her family since 1910 provide the backing of each work. Song selects the smaller, overlaid shapes from textiles she finds in the United States, sometimes at shops in the NYC garment district where the artist keeps her studio. While studying in art school in Beijing in the 1990s, the artist made frequent visits to the rural countryside, where she came into contact with Chinese folk artists using centuries-old traditional techniques of paper-cutting, crocheting, and quilting. Becoming enamored of these popular traditions, she adapted them, together with her own expertise in paper-cutting, to her recent body of work in quilted fabric. Within Song's practice is an interest in women's labor, the exploration of visual elements from her dreams, and the joining of material and art historical traditions of different cultures within one overall visual composition.
Stabio's paintings, informed by her experience of being Filipino American, include flat sections of colorful shapes layered into compositions that refer to the environment and culture of the Philippines. Her technique involves brushing flat areas of acrylic within hand-drawn outlines and then spraying acrylic paint over several hand-cut stencils placed onto the surface of the canvas in multiple takes. Repeating the process of layering stencils and paint, Stabio achieves a non-uniform surface, shadow effects, and fine dot patterns within crisp outlines and nods to aspects of printmaking in the process. Her imagery is inspired by the tropical environment of the Philippines, where the artist frequently visits, including its volcanoes, caves, lush plants, and weather patterns such as monsoons. Family traditions of sewing find a place in Stabio's paintings entitled, "Eye of the Needle," while her "Cave" works draw inspiration from a visit she made to the vast, natural system of caves of the Underground River in Palawan. As Stabio notes of the visit, "It yet again reminded me that a journey--in my case, a journey to connect with one's sense of self and identity--can often only be seen in sections. The full picture emerges gradually through imagination, stitching all the images and memories together."
Xin Song was born in Beijing, China in 1970. In 1994 Song graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, China. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and has maintained a studio at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts since 2010. Her works have been exhibited at Space Gallery Association, Shanghai, Chambers Fine Art, New York, NY, the Consulate General of France in New York, New York, NY, and the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China, among many other venues. Song has completed numerous public projects including the following permanent installations: MTA Arts for Transit, Bay Parkway Landmark Station, Brooklyn, NY (2010) and Percent for Art, Public Art for Public School Program, PS170K, Brooklyn, NY (2014). She is the 2021 recipient of a NYFA City Artists Corps Grant and the 2021 recipient of an Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts North Fork Residency.
Maria Stabio was born in 1985 in San Francisco, CA in and lives and works between Barnesville, Pennsylvania and Brooklyn, New York. She received an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University in 2012, and a BFA in Painting from Boston University in 2007. Stabio's works have been exhibited at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, Pen and Brush, New York, NY, Essex Flowers, New York, NY, Trestle Projects, Brooklyn, NY, Louis B. James, New York, NY, among other venues. She has completed numerous artist residencies, including a 2012 Artist in Residence Fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, where she was a resident artist and adjunct faculty member for one year. She will be an upcoming artist in residence at Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY, in September 2023.