Drowning in My Own Expectations, Claudia DeMonte s sculpture exhibition, informed by decades of her observing the sentiments, challenges, issues, dreams, and expectations of women universally, will open at the June Kelly Gallery, 166 Mercer Street, on April 3.  The exhibition will remain on view through May 13.

Agnes Gund, president emerita of New York s Museum of Modern Art, wrote in the foreword in the monograph entitled Claudia DeMonte, that she marvels at how tenaciously and passionately DeMonte has explored the relationship of images and women.  One senses a vibrant, concerned, empathetic soul in them all.   An essay in the monograph, by art critic Eleanor Heartney, states that the artist s travels had made her increasingly aware of the way objects act as surrogates for important issues in our lives.

Determination and grit have, without exception, for decades, been key roles in DeMonte s sculpted subjects from earlier homemaker with pewter everyday items, to traveler with luggage tags from around the world, and consumer with an archetypal high-end Birkin handbag, all encrusted with pictographic configurations, and her powerful visually narrative 2022 bronze sculpture, entitled Leap of Faith, featuring a woman atop a staircase, positioned to dive into space.  In this current body of work, DeMonte s pony-tailed surrogates convey unfamiliar emotional impressions: angst and uncertainty.

To the sculpture titled Drowning in My Own Expectations, she adds the descriptive word, Worry; about the sculpture titled Next Step, she writes, This woman, with her pony-tailed head, has many legs, each going in a different direction. She must choose, as we all do in life, which way to go next   These works reflect today s moment and how women globally are attempting to navigate.  She has utilized dreams and objects symbolic of female gender materialism as sources of inspiration for her art.  Still, in this current body of work, a remarkable sense of irony is evident in her sculptural narratives.  The imagined scenarios now portray a different psychological presence.  Worry, anxiety, and uncertainty are the informers of her art. These are dilemmas DeMonte presents for viewers to take seriously.

DeMonte lives and works in New York and Miami Beach, FL.  She received a Bachelor's degree from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland in Baltimore and an MFA from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.  DeMonte's work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally.  The many public and private collections in which she is represented include the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Bass Museum, Miami, FL; Flint Institute of Art, MI; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS; Lowe Museum, Miami Beach, FL; New Orleans Museum of Art, LA; Indianapolis Museum of Art; University of Maryland, College Park; Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA; Portland Museum of Art, ME; Contemporary Art Museum, Villa Rufolo, Ravello, Italy; Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, Poland; and University of Oldenburg, Germany.