ART CAKE RESIDENT PRESENTATION SERIES

DANNIELLE TEGEDER

JUNE 1 - JUNE 7, 2021 (BY APPOINTMENT)

TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 4-7P

For the second year of the studio program, Art Cake is pleased to present a solo presentation by participating artist, Dannielle Tegeder. On view is an immersive installation composed of four new paintings installed on top of wall paintings by the artist. On Tuesday, June 1, the artist will be on site welcoming visits from 4-7P. To reserve a time to visit in person, please email info@artcake.org.

This is the second part of a series that Art Cake has organized for the participating artists-in-residence as an opportunity to present and document their work made during the pandemic outside of the studio.

Please view the artists-in-residence for a deeper look into each artist’s studio practice.

DANNIELLE TEGEDER IN CONVERSATION WITH MARINA GLUCKMAN

MG: The title of your new installation is: Slate Stable Machine system with Paintings and Human Crash Moments, Pink Schema Map Headquarters, and Yellow Collisions that Break down to Invisibly Hidden concealed Secret Green Accidents of Patterns with Teal Evolutionary systems, and a Silver Artificial life Diagram of Ordered Life Experiments with Orange Danger Classified Squares and A Structured Live Pandemic Ghost Map. Could you discuss the development of the four paintings individually and describe what we are looking at in the space?

DT: My work explores abstraction and architecture, building on modernist legacies of abstract art, architectural draftsmanship, translation, and city planning. Throughout my career, I have pursued new directions in my work by experimenting with installation, sound, performance, and collaboration. Each of my paintings is a cosmology in which the long, elaborate title serves as an oblique legend. Inspired formally and conceptually by the utopian impulse of the Constructivists, my works manifest as poetic extrapolations of urban construction.

I have been making large-scale paintings and in recent years have begun expanding my investigations of structure and vision into three-dimensional space. The systems I create are not self-contained, but instead spill out of their frames and boundaries, engaging with the architectural spaces they inhabit. My practice draws out the visual interplay between the works and their installation, developing a project of translation between media. The essential interests that currently inform my work include excavating and testing the notions of what painting can be.

MG: The common thread through your multidisciplinary practice, spanning painting and drawing, to large-scale installation, sculptural objects, video, sound, and animation, explores concepts of systems through abstraction. There are often recurring motifs and symbols that appear in your work. When and how did you develop your visual language and can you tell us about the iconography and how it has evolved? 

DT: Systems of architecture and urban development have always been an influence in my life. I attribute this to my father, who was a working-class union steamfitter. I was deeply fascinated by the symbols and designs shown in the schematic drawings he left unrolled on our kitchen table. My compositions are drawn with techniques rooted in this disappearing traditional craft and are transformed through the use of paint, colored pencils, gouache, and ink.

Trained as a traditional abstract painter, I’ve started adding spatial installations to my work. More recently, sound, performance, and collaborative strategies have also become key elements in my practice.

I am also interested in exhibition design, and the production of the work itself. By moving across drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and other forms, I utilize the language of painting in an expanded field and create a space in which social ideas and the legacy of Modernism can be activated through abstraction.

MG: The four present paintings are installed over a wall painting consisting of a similar visual vocabulary and color palette. Could you talk a bit about the site-specificity of your work and how architecture and space informs your practice?

DT: My most recent work questions the position of contemporary abstraction within political and social frameworks. I established a formalist approach to social practice in the arts beginning in 2018. This approach involves immersive environments representing architecture’s ability to confront and undermine expectations and experience. The paintings, coupled with their respective poetic titles, alluded to an amalgamation of systemic concepts. Within and across the paintings themselves, segmented lines, chunks of solid color, repetitive patterns, and the occasional dissolution of medium create a complex host of imageries. Through this assembly of forms and ideas, the paintings and the painted walls behind them, dictate an abstract narrative for the viewer, asking them to discern the role of painting in their day-to-day lives.

MG: In the past, you've developed bodies of work and artist books that explore imagined utopias and transitory spaces. Based on your 2016 interview in The Brooklyn Rail, these works were made at a time that you were traveling in and out of cities all over the world much more frequently. How does the present installation relate to past bodies of work? How does the installation depart from past works, particularly given that it was executed and realized during the pandemic?

DT: Like most of my recent work, this installation questions the ability of large-scale painting and installation to cohesively connect to one another and those viewing it. In this, and older, bodies of work the gallery serves as a stage set, contextualizing the components of the installation and inviting viewers to rethink the way they experience space. 

MG: What other projects have taken form during the pandemic and what are you currently working on?

DT: As we entered the COVID-19 lockdown, my studio practice changed dramatically. Following a 15-year stint at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, I decided to relocate my workspace to ArtCake in order to cut down my commuting time and remain close to my family as the pandemic raged. A multitude of projects, the remuneration for which were intended to sustain my work space were cancelled or postponed. The delicate balance I maintained between my vocations as artist, educator, and mother blended into one another.

Despite this, however, I was also able to recalibrate my practice. I created The Pandemic Salon, started in early quarantine, which brings together artists, writers, and thinkers to discuss topics in an online environment. The 12 Salons have connected an audience of 600 participants from 40 countries. Discussions begin through presentations grounded in disciplines including philosophy, classical music, poetry, science, and art. The project’s cross-disciplinary openness fosters a sense of community, dismantling hierarchical structures found in traditional forms of institutional showcasing. 

Also during quarantine I co-founded Hilma’s Ghost, a feminist artist collective that addresses existing gaps in abstraction. Inspired by Hilma af Klint's resurgence, the collective recovers esoteric thought through collaborative art making, rigorous study, and ritual practice. We have hosted 3 virtual programs and are creating a database of women artists working in spirituality and abstraction.

As the world reopens, and we return to the art world, I am in the process of planning a slate of exhibitions. My work will be on view this Fall at Arroniz Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City and at the Carrie Secrist Gallery booth at Armory New York.