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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.
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