Manufactured Color
Molly Heron, Mallary Johnson, Neil Marcello
June 26th – August 25th, 2018
Project: ARTspace is pleased to announce Manufactured Color, featuring three perspectives on the contemporary production and use of natural and synthetic color.
Ranging across photography, works on paper and three-dimensional constructions, this exhibition creates a layered dialogue between the physical and aesthetic qualities of various pigments and dyes.
Molly Heron’s interventionist sculptures utilize plastics, such as genetic lab petri dishes, that have been redirected from their predestined journey to the landfill and filled with discarded latex house paint colors from big-box hardware stores.
Mallary Johnson’s paper weavings and collages ritualistically re-establish a direct connection with plant-based pigment sources and foreground an intimate, hand-made approach toward production.
Neil Marcello’s photographs of synthetically colored candy set within industrial tableaus offer a whimsical record of human ingenuity and its footprint in the wake of our manufactured existence.
Through the juxtaposition of the artists’ processes, this exhibition offers a unique look into the reclaiming, cultivation and critical examination of color in the 21st century.
Molly Heron is a New York-based artist working with color and concerns about environmental sustainability. A 2011 recipient of an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Art, she has exhibited her work and has been awarded artist residencies since 1982. She was a panelist at Columbia University 2013 lecture “Bacteria in Art and Science.” She was one of 15 artists and scientists invited to the Earth Institute Of Technology at Columbia University, New York, for PositiveFeedback, a collaboration with Marfa Dialogues and the Rauschenberg Institute in New York. Her work appears in David Hornung 2012 book, Color: A Workshop Approach.
Mallary Johnson is a Philadelphia-based artist and educator whose work creates intersections between art and ecology. She received a BFA from Moore College of Art and Design in 2001 and an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2011. Recent projects include Eclipse, a collaborative public project and large scale avian-themed installation created in partnership with the National Audubon Society, Nested, a permanent public sculpture commissioned by Fairmount Park Conservancy in Philadelphia highlighting meadows as a critical component of urban ecosystems and Rituals for Remembering, an ongoing close study of plant-based pigments.
Neil Marcello is a Philadelphia-based photographer and visual artist whose works explore the nature of human progress and his personal connection with it. He has a BA in Interior Design from Indiana State University. The Sweet Tooth project is the first installment of a three part series, focusing on the roles of synthetic dyes in American industry, and has been the subject of a self-published monograph of the same title. Neil is presently working on the second installment, entitled Toy Stories, scheduled for release in 2020.