EXHIBITION IMAGES | PRESS RELEASE
January 14 – March 26 | 79 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, NY
For all further information please contact info@halseymckay.com
Corinne Chase, Lip Stain, 2022, Translucent porcelain, 14.5 x 11.25 inches
Halsey McKay presents Curtain, Corinne Chase’s first solo show with the gallery. Chase engages with movement as a counterpart to form; capturing performative gestures between artist and material. Although her work is primarily ceramic, she also embeds layers of fabric, photography, plaster and other media, deepening each object’s history. Gestures are drawn from body memory and details from her personal surroundings such as a peach pit, the view from her studio window, or a stage curtain. Some materials surface in final stages of her work, while many function as moments of support leaving traces throughout the process.
In the studio, Chase often begins with fabric cast in plaster, made into a mold to press against with clay. Using colored porcelain, she responds to its shape with painterly marks onto her slabs before pressing and peeling away the clay from its mold to reveal its form. This causes stress marks that tear at and weaken the clay. She embraces these moments as a collaboration with the material’s limitations. Utilizing ceramic glaze in an experimental fashion, she emulates the material chemistry of oil paint and fabric dye. Colors and compositions are drawn from close up images of nature and moments in her immediate surroundings. Some obscured images are used as decals, often large swatches of color applied like ink transfers that bend and melt halos against a surface that can’t take the entirety of its initial form.
In the making of Curtain, Corinne pulled from moments in her life that are like being in the wings of atheater. A small space that feels long, yet short lived, where a performer can view the audience while the audience cannot see them before stepping on stage. This space can hold multitudes; seconds of alert embodiment, adrenalin or a calm force. Her ceramic paintings carry a similar hidden readiness. The translucent porcelain is static and hovers over the gallery walls like curtains, while her gestures and marks are kinetic and brought to life by the air caught between surfaces. They have a thin delicate skin, made out of a stone-like material, with a deep archival history.
Corinne Chase was born in western Massachusetts and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA in ceramics with a minor in dance from Alfred University New York State College of Ceramics. For 4 years she has been an educator teaching ceramic courses, a technician, and production assistant at BKLYN Clay. She has received the Carol Eisner award at Silvermine Arts Center, New Canaan, CT in Art of the Northeast exhibition curated by David Kiehl; Watershed Summer Residency Scholarship in New Castle, ME; Tiffany Mills Dance Company Workshop Scholarship at Mark Morris Dance Center, Brooklyn NY; and Salem Art Works Intercollegiate Iron Pour Scholarship, Salem MA. Her work has been shown in Turner Gallery, Miller Performing Arts Center and Black Box Theater in Alfred, NY, and The Boston Center for the Arts in collaboration with KAIROS Dance Theater as set designer for their performance OBJECT.
