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November Issue 2004
Joie Lassiter Gallery in Charlotte, NC, Features Works by Elizabeth Turk
Joie
Lassiter Gallery in Charlotte, NC, is presenting the exhibition,
Bellybuttons - Elizabeth Turk, on view through Nov. 8,
2004.
Since the late 1990s, Turk has lived in New
York, and for several years has maintained a studio within a marble
fabricating facility in Santa Ana, CA. With an MFA in Sculpture
from the Rinehart School at the Maryland Institute, and after
completing several prestigious residencies - including the Kyojima
Artist in Residence Program, Tokyo, Japan and the McColl Center
for Visual Art in Charlotte, Turk returns to Charlotte for her
first solo museum show at the Mint Museum of Art, Vantage Point
III Elizabeth Turk - The Collars: Tracings of Thought.
The two shows which are running in conjunction with each other
provide a full viewing of Turk's oeuvre. The collars, both sculptures
and etchings, appear architectural and have a fragile skeletal
quality that belies the fortitude of the material, whilst the
bellybuttons appear powerfully substantial despite their size.
Ruling the patterns of all objects within nature and many precisely
created man-made objects is the Fibonacci sequence, which is evident
within both Turk's collar and bellybutton sculptures.
The collars demonstrate it in their perfect curves and through
their symmetry and proportions. The golden mean, which finds its
point in the human body at the navel, is derived from this mathematical
series. Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man employed the golden mean
to demonstrate the arithmetics of beauty. Since the time of
the Ancient Greeks, the navel has held a special significance
within most cultures. The Ancient Greeks saw mountains and volcanoes
as the navels of the earth, the founts of life itself.
Even today most spiritual paths acknowledge the fecund capacity of the navel. Hinduism sees the navel as the source of life and creativity; Buddhism and Zen philosophy say that the navel, the point where life began pulsating before birth, is the seat of the mind. In western culture we recognize that instinctual impulses and powerful emotions come from the gut - the navel. With no two identical in appearance, it is a unique point in the body, which conversely is a universal point of connectivity for each one of us.
For further information check our NC Commercial Gallery listings, call the gallery at 704/373-1464, e-mail at (info@lassitergallery.com), or at (www.lassitergallery.com).
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