Type of Blue

Elizabeth Karp-Evans
January 12 - February 18, 2018

Opening reception: Sunday, January 14, 2018 6-8pm

138 Eldridge Street, New York, NY 10002

PRESS RELEASE:

New York is a blue space.

It’s blue in how it feels: deep and sad, but also vast and bright.

The city is reflected in the fields of blue surfaces: windows, mirrors, and steel.

Darondo is the soundtrack.

For Type of Blue, Elizabeth Karp-Evans created a series of new sculptures and 2D works that are immersive in their conversation with each other. They’re discussing the highs and lows of the city.

The city’s architecture is both imprinted on and reflected in Karp-Evans’ mirrors and windows: Mirrors with abstracted facades dressed in photographic silhouettes printed on film are arranged like parts of an anonymous building; Three faint images, almost auras of buildings, transferred from Mylar to paper and framed, one image is the Freedom Tower; Two blue plexiglass windowpanes hang from the ceiling, with images and text backlit like staring into a window; Resting Place 1, the large reflective bed-like sculpture (which you are invited to lie down in), immediately confronts you with your own reflection in blue, but it also offers a retreat, and a space for contemplation.

As a place for self-discovery, cities are like scapes: Landscapes, Escapes, Dreamscapes. Here, the Scapes create moments for you to decide whether your relationship to New York will be a codependent or reciprocal one. The work in this show derives from self-confrontation, from forcing yourself to stop looking through the glass and focus on the reflection.

— Ebony L. Haynes

Elizabeth Karp-Evans (b. 1986, Salem, Oregon) explores a multidisciplinary practice of writing, editing, design, and art making. Her work addresses questions of personal history, built environments, and memory. She holds an MFA from the New School for Social Research and is co-founder of the publishing and design studio Pacific. Her writing has been published in Talk Magazine, A woman’s Thing, Guernica, and Remix; her forthcoming book of poetry is titled Proper Ground. She is the editor-in-chief for The Studio Museum in Harlem’s biannual magazine Studio, and a former interviews editor for Guernica. Her most recent show in New York was New Stage, New Badges (2017) at Signal gallery with the artist Nikholis Planck. She was selected to be a 2018 artist in residence at the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida. Elizabeth lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.