CAROLINE BURTON

Prey

December 7, 2012 - January 12, 2013
Reception: Thurs., Dec 13th - 6pm to 8pm

For her first solo exhibition with Accola Griefen Gallery, Caroline Burton exhibits paintings, drawings and sculpture inspired by all things left behind. Burton’s subtle and poignant paintings depict piles of what appear to be discarded papers, cardboard and rags.  Like urban debris or a huddled street dweller, these mysteriously entwined forms in grayscales allude to the former presence of the human hand or form.

For her sculptural works in Sleep Series, Burton employs a tempered palette of whites and creams.  A long row of pillow-like forms allude to rest, while the reality of the heavy, dense material confounds the possibility of any utility. Near by stand two towers, which might reference city structures if not for their irregularity: each has a soft, furry “roof” and a slight slump. As Barbara MacAdam describes, “[Burton] extends her practice right into an ambiguous sculptural realm where using the slightly rough material hydrocal – a form of cement – and wire (the connection with her [earlier] drawings), she builds unfamiliar looking objects, underscored by a grid, and renders the ordinary and domestic – like a drain, a rabbit, a pillow – foreign and the unknown almost familiar.”  The most literal of Burton’s sculpture are also the smallest: two tiny bronze rabbit’s feet hang from hooks on the wall and allude more directly to the exhibition title.

Caroline Burton received her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers and her BFA from The Cleveland Institute of Art. She has had solo exhibitions at PDX Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; Real Form Project Space, New York; Cooper Gallery, Jersey City, NJ; Elzay Gallery of Art and Ohio Northern University, in Ada, OH. Her work has been featured in museum exhibitions including The Feminine Mystique curated by Rocio Aranda-Alverado at the Jersey City Museum and Pencil Pushed curated by Creighton Michael at the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Group show venues include Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston; Ernest Rubenstein Gallery, New York; New Jersey City University, Jersey City; Bond Gallery, New York; Gary Snyder Fine Art, New York; and New Jersey Center for Visual Arts. She is the recipient of many grants including two New Jersey State Council on the Arts grants, three Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation grants and a grant from Rutgers Center for Print and Paper. Her work is included in many private and public collections including the Jersey City Museum; the Montclair Art Museum; the Morris Museum, Morristown, New Jersey; the Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ; and the Zimmerli Museum, New Brunswick NJ. Internationally, she is also represented in the collection of the Museo de Art Moderno de la Republica Dominicana in the Dominican Republic.