FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
McGrath Galleries is pleased to announce:
Traci Talasco
June 15th, 2002 New York, McGrath Galleries located at 9 East 77th Street, announces the opening of its exhibition of Traci Talasco’s new installation work, on view from October 2nd through October 23rd, 2002. An opening reception will be held for the artist on October 2nd from 6:00pm to 8:00pm. This is the first solo exhibition for the artist in New York and will introduce 10 new installation pieces.
“Property Line” investigates the disillusionment of “The American Dream” and the innately mundane quality of material items that we have come to deem important on a superficial level. In our efforts to achieve the “American Dream,” home ownership has become the ultimate measure of success. As our most valuable possession, our home is an object that determines our social class and in turn, implies a certain lifestyle. The works in this exhibition explore the physical and metaphorical boundaries associated with the acquisition of a home. Strict regimentation and cookie cutter uniformity have been applied to the rural landscape, forcing it to become more urbanized by aligning it into a “city” grid. These perfect yet generic landscapes have an underlying theme of portability, reinforcing the notion that home is a purchasable commodity. In addition, this exhibition illustrates the pressure we feel to be successful and fit the ideal, which ultimately forces us to create facades, often translating our public behavior into an impenetrable wall of friendly chatter and politesse. Talasco exposes our romantic misconceptions about home by reducing ordinary objects to empty shells, stripping them of their function, whereby deeming them useless. Within certain structured boundaries, Talasco has come to examine implied lifestyles and public personas that are universal to both urban and suburban worlds. By redirecting our “role” in society she has placed individual people into inappropriate environments whereby making them the subject of acquisition. Used as a status symbol, they themselves become pawns in a fierce competition to keep up with the neighbors. Talasco’s work provides a humorous social commentary on the discrepancy between how we strive for others to see us in a certain light, based on superficial qualifications, and how our lives often do not live up to our own pre-conceived notions of home, family life, and relationships. Turning the tables on our social climbing obsession, we are left to wonder who it is we are trying to impress.
Talasco was born in the suburbs and has spent her adult life New York City. After graduating from the State University of New York at Paltz with a degree in metal smithing, she went on to attend the Tyler School of Art / Temple University graduating in 1996 with a BFA in Glass. Since then she has had several group exhibitions in New York and Philadelphia and was a finalist for the Bronx Museum of the Arts AIM program. Talasco currently lives and works in New York City. Her installation work will be on show at McGrath Galleries Monday through Friday from 9:30am to 5:00pm.
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Images of the work are available upon request and on our web site: www.mcgrathgalleries.com
Media inquiries:
Julia Coleman
(212) 737-7396