Structured Simplicity
Curated by Felicity Hogan

Exhibition Dates: June 20 - August 9, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 20, 6-9 PM
Curator and Artists' talk: Thursday, July 9, 7-8 PM

Mai Braun
Hilary Harnischfeger
Elana Herzog
Fabienne Lasserre
Amy Yoes

Image Information from left to right: Mai Braun, Tower - Fragile to Clorox. 2006. cardboard, tape. 104” x 18.5” x 24". Collection of Anne Doran. Photograph: Jason Mandella. Courtesy of the artist and Feature Inc., New York. Amy Yoes, Modification and Collapse, 2009. video loop. Photograph: Amy Yoes. Fabienne Lasserre, Worldless, 2009. felt, pigment, acrylic polymer, linen, molding paste, armature, acrylic paint
54” x 21” x 19”. Photograph: DAC.

Structured Simplicity presents a group of artists, Mai Braun, Hilary Harnischfeger, Elana Herzog, Fabienne Lasserre, and Amy Yoes, who work in sculpture and site-specific installation. From a formalist and abstract perspective, the exhibition investigates aspects of simplicity,taking purification as a point of departure i.e. making things simpler through structure, be they confined or chaotic. In bringing this group together, the curator, Felicity Hogan, seeks to explore varying manifestations of this concept and how structures are formed and conveyed through diversity of approach and use of materials.

The exhibition debuts new site-specific works by Mai Braun, Elana Herzog and Amy Yoes as well as previously unseen new works by Fabienne Lasserre and Hilary Harnischfeger. Fabienne Lasserre’s humorously crafted and sensual sculptures, striking a bold intelligent balance between the logical and illogical, are positioned alongside Mai Braun's mischievously formed shredded NY Times-mâché piece: Your Emotions Make You a Monster. Mai Braun’s stacked cardboard boxes parallel and echo Amy Yoes' mechanical hard-edged installation. Hilary Harnischfeger’s deftly sliced and angular sculptures complement Elana Herzog’s de-constructed garments and bed linens, patched aggressively with compulsively tacked staples. Additional connections will be reinforced through proximity. An influence of rudimentary materials is common to all artists with processes that revel in tension and release. In the art of Amy Yoes, Hilary Harnischfeger and Mai Braun, the subtle use of planes and angles form associations that display contrasting use of a comparable visual language. Manipulation and the distortion of
architectural form further connect works by Amy Yoes and Elana Herzog.

Structured Simplicity was developed in response to the distinctive architecture and characteristics of the DAC gallery. While sculpture and installation are the primary focus, the exhibition also includes bas-reliefs by Hilary Harnischfeger and works on paper by Mai Braun as well as a new video by Amy Yoes created especially for Structured Simplicity.

Mai Braun was born in Berlin and is now based in Frankfurt after formerly residing in New York and Houston, TX. Exhibitions include Recent Object at Feature Inc, Exercises in Resourcefulness at Cuchifritos, NY, curated by Simone Subal, and More Object, her New York solo debut at Brooklyn Fire Proof in 2006. Group exhibitions include Groundwork at David Patton Gallery and Material for the Making at Elizabeth Dee Gallery. Her works have been shown at the Bronx Museum of Art, Kluuvi Galleria, Helsinki and in Texas at institutions such as DiverseWorks, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Arlington Museum of Art. Braun was artist-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX in 2005, and has been the recipient of several fellowships and prizes from major institutions such as the Bronx Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX.

Hilary Harnischfeger was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1972 and now lives and works in New York, NY. She received her MFA from Columbia University. Harnischfeger's solo exhibition at Rachel Uffner Gallery, NY is on display through June 21. Her work was included in The Line of Time, And the Plane of Now, Harris Lieberman and Wallspace Gallery, New York, NY, You Are Here, Ballroom, Marfa, TX, Hunch & Flail, Artists Space, New York, NY and Pertaining to Painting, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX.

Elana Herzog works in Brooklyn, lives in New York and has recently exhibited a site-specific installation at the Drawing Center in New York City. Herzog is currently a participant on the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Residency and at the Workspace Program at Dieu Donné. Other exhibitions include a two-person show Making Traces, with Lieven DeBoeck in 2007 at LMAK Projects, New York, NY, Plaid, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, W(e)ave, a collaboration with Michael Schumacher, Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut, and Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting, Museum of Art and Design, NY, traveling exhibition. Herzog’s artwork has been reviewed extensively in publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker magazine, Time Out New York, New York Sun and Art in America.

Fabienne Lasserre was born in Montreal and is now based in Brooklyn, New York. Projects include The Split Wall, a two-person exhibition with Hilary Harnischfeger at South First Gallery, Brooklyn in 2008 and her debut New York solo exhibition, Others, at Virgil de Voldere Gallery, in 2006. Group exhibitions include Welcome to My World, curated by Matthew Day Jackson and Amy Davila, Alexandre Pollazzon Gallery, London, UK, The Line of Time And the Plane of Now, Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York and Possibly Being at Esso Gallery, New York. Lasserre was awarded the Special Editions Residency at the Lower East Side Printshop in 2007 and the Emerging Artists Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY in 2006. She has recently completed a residency at La Curtiduria, Oaxaca, Mexico.

Amy Yoes is based in Manhattan, New York and is represented by Michael Steinberg Fine Art, New York. Her 2007 solo exhibition there, Rear-View Mirror, was written about by Art in America, Village Voice and The New York Times. A former Pollock-Krasner grant and NYFA fellowship recipient, her sculptural installations have been exhibited in L.I.C., N.Y.C. at Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY; Out of Bounds at Wave Hill, NY; Zip at Artspace, New Haven, CT; Carriage House Project at Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY; and Solitude and Focus, Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, CT. Recent projects include a private commission that is an interactive sculptural kitchen created in a Manhattan apartment and Street-Level, a site-specific installation at Art in General. Through the Percent for Arts program, she is working on a wall-based sculpture commission for a new high school in the Bronx.

Felicity Hogan is a British artist and curator based in New York. In her current capacity as Executive Director at Artists Alliance Inc, an artist centered 501 (c) (3) non-profit, she is responsible for overseeing both a residency program and art gallery/project space, Cuchifritos, in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Prior to the above, Ms. Hogan acquired extensive experience as Founder & Director of Flat (2000 – 2003) an experimental space in a Manhattan apartment, through freelance contracts at art fairs in New York, Madrid, Miami and London, as well as non-profit arts organizations in New York City e.g. the Lower East Side Printshop as Outreach Director (2007-08) and CUE Art Foundation (2007/2008). Among her numerous extra-curricular activities, Ms. Hogan has been a visiting Guest Critic to ISCP, Art Omi and Location One, a panelist at Dumbo Arts Center in 2007/8 and at Dieu Donne Papermill. She has served on selection panels at Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Lower East Side Printshop and Gallery Korea, Korean Cultural Service NY and is a member of the Curatorial Advisory Board at Bronx River Arts Center and on the Advisory Board of Culture Push.

Since early 2009, Ms. Hogan has also been working as Development & Curatorial Associate for the Tuning Exhibition, "The 21st Century, The Feminine Century, and The Century of Diversity and Hope," , curated by Heng-Gil Han, at the Incheon Women Artists' Biennale in Korea in August 2009. As an independent curator, Ms. Hogan’s projects include guest curator at Free Store, NY, organized by Double A Projects and catalog essayist for the final exhibition by Juana Valdes, Workspace Resident at Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Jamaica, Queens, in June 2009. Her essay for the artist monograph “Talk to the Hand,” on Hermelinde Hergenhahn (translated into German) was published by the Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral, Germany in 2008.

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