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511 Gallery is pleased to announce Jennifer Odem: Sculptures and Drawings, a solo exhibition of new work by the New Orleans artist, which will open at 511 Gallery Lake Placid, with an artist's reception on Friday, October 23, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Jennifer Odem: Sculptures and Drawings presents the artist's current work, in which she continues to address issues of transience and permanence, hand-crafted versus industrial objects, and fragility versus strength, as well gender differentiation and ecological sustenance. These issues are made manifest not only in the contrasting materials utilized in individual works themselves, but also by the juxtaposition of the two media in which Odem works.
About her sculptural practice, Odem has said, "The idea of vulnerability as strength underlies my investigation of forms and materials... Seemingly delicate sculptures made from strong, durable materials expose a gap that exists between the permanent and impermanent, the feminine and masculine, the natural and artificial. Subverted meanings, humor, and absurdity all play a role in my portrayals of gender issues, human relationships, and our connection to the land, while the interplay between contradictory and exaggerated forms allows me to question social traditions and belief systems."
Odem's drawings directly reference her sculptural works. Though they do not always become resolved sculptures, the drawings do provide insight into her creative process. They do not reference a single object or place found in reality, but rather impart the "sense" of a recognizable environment or what the "world" might look like.
Odem, a Louisiana native and recent recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation's Career Opportunity Grant (2008), has exhibited her work widely in the U.S. and abroad, including artist residencies in New Orleans, Poland, England, and Ireland. This past spring, her work was shown at the New Orleans Museum of Art in the exhibition, A Discourse in Abstraction: Jennifer Odem and NOMA's Permanent Collection. Jennifer Odem's site-specific projects include a wind-sculpture on the Utah Salt Flats commissioned by the Center for Land Use Interpretation and, most recently, Blue Fence, an outdoor installation in the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans, commissioned by AORTA Projects: Site Specific Art for the Post Disaster Communities of Today.
