Slicey Dicey by Suzan Shutan

September 8 - October 6, 2019
Opening Reception: Sunday, September 8, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Suzan Shutan Artist’s Statement:
As a young child who enjoyed sitting and daydreaming by windows looking out at the sky, I would be mesmerized by millions of tiny particles of dust floating and shimmering through a streaming light. Collectively they were voluminous and vaguely shaped, yet morphed by the seconds like clouds often do.

I was absolutely transfixed by this phenomenon, later discovering they were particles of matter. This Visual memory lodged itself in many forms of my artwork throughout the years, creating manifestations of suspended moments of movements that spatially flow through its materials, inspired by the study of natural and manmade systems. I blend styles and ideas, with my interest in the hybrid having lead to a crossbreeding of object and painting. The work is often ironic and with oddly connected commentary. I find myself in constant negotiation between working with flatness, like the car-toon black holes that bugs bunny jumps into then retrieves to escape Elmer Fudd, and dimension, as when cotton candy is formed into a solid. The play of light and shadow are used as ominous and ethereal elements in my work, while the materials incorporate found colors and textures that are bold and dissonant, sometimes combined with paint. My starting point is what the material might suggest. The work is tactile and vacillates between abundance and simplicity, ebbing and flowing into organic or geo-metrical patterns that coalesce. A friend said I am “taking formalism out for a dance”.

My work is as much about process and visceral transformation, as it is driven by a conceptual exploration of our human condition.

Suzan Shutan

Suzan Shutan received an MFA from Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts, New Brunswick, NJ and BFA from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, She is a recipient of many awards, namely three CT Artist Fellowships in Sculpture, a CEC Artslink grant, Art Matters grant, Berkshire Taconic Foundation A.R.T grant, and two Foundation for Contemporary Arts grants, from NY. Shutan has been a Federal Public Art Project finalist and has attended artist residencies at Bemis Foundation NE, Yaddo NY and Proyecto Ace in Buenos Aires, Argentina where she was awarded a mid-career artist exhibition. Her work has been shown throughout the United States, Latin America and Europe. Shutan has been featured in fifteen solo exhibits that include Zacheta National Gallery of Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Poland, the Aldrich Museum, Connecticut and The Arts & Cultural Center, Florida as well as twenty-three international group exhibits such as The Bulgakov Museum, Kiev, Ukraine, Biennial Internationale d’art nonobjective, Grenoble, France, Palace Ujazdowski Contemporary Art Center, Warsaw, Poland and Five Walls, Melbourne, Australia. Shutan has exhibited in over 250 national museum and galleries like Bank of America Plaza, Charlotte North Carolina, The Kaneko Org, Omaha, Nebraska, Contemporary Arts Center Los Vegas, NV , The Alternative Museum; NYC , Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY , Coagula Curatorial, Los Angeles, CA and ODETTA, Brooklyn and New York City.

Suzan Shutan’s work has been published in Paper Art Installations II, by ArtPower International Publishing Company LLC, Hong Kong, and by Post Road Literary Books, Boston, MA, Issue 24 & 28 and has been favorably reviewed by the Smithsonian Magazine, Sculpture Magazine, New York Times, Art New England Magazine and High Performance Magazine among noted art papers. Her work can be found in private and public collections such as the University of California Los Angles, the Swedish Archives in Bjaard, and Villa Taverna Foundation, with commissioned work at Log-Me-In headquarters, Boston, MA and Sloan Kettering Hospital, NYC, NY.

Suzan Shutan has taught at RISD, University of Nebraska, Omaha, Quinnipiac University and Housatonic Community College, CT and is a mentor for MFA students in low residency programs in the Northeast USA. She writes and consults on art and curates. Recent curatorial projects include Mighty Minis, CT, Going Big, NYC, Pins & Needles, CT, Making Room Ten Interpretations, CT.

Her work can be viewed on First Dibs, Geoform, Instagram (sshutan), FB, Pinterest, Linked in and at www.suzanshutan.com.