Jeff Bailey Gallery is pleased to present Carl D’Alvia: Huddle, an exhibition of recent drawings and outdoor and indoor sculpture.
Draped, clumped, nested, and massed, D’Alvia's sculptures suggest humble beings patiently alive but poised midway in a glacial crawl through material possibility. Each implies a having-been-something-else, a past identity so eroded or overgrown that only a mute but irrepressible personality thrums beneath the surface, their intensely worked surfaces the handmaiden to their strange powers. Their light-hearted, even comic twists on monumental sculpture and representational statuary point to their literal and anxious heaviness.
Lith (aluminum, 96 x 48 x 31 inches) stands emphatically at the back of the garden, its compressed, smooth, stacked form curving upward to the tree above. Worm (bronze, 27 x 20 x 28 inches) huddles at the ready nearby, tight to the ground, its head raised and ready to move.
D’Alvia’s ink on paper drawings feature a similar cast of characters and corresponding parts. Surfaces are richly worked or intricately patterned. The forms’ exteriors echo those of the sculptures, creating a dialogue between 2D and 3D representation. Feathers, fur and leaf patterns flock to form, evoking the faded intimacy of forgotten toys and the deep time of abandoned machinery.
This is D’Alvia’s (born 1965) first solo exhibition with the gallery. His work was included in the gallery’s group exhibition, Eat A Peach, in 2015. He has had many solo exhibitions, most recently at Nathalie Karg Gallery and Regina Rex, New York. He is a recipient of The Rome Prize, 2012-2013. He lives and works in New York and Connecticut.
Jeff Bailey Gallery is located at 127 Warren Street, Hudson, New York, 12534. Gallery hours are Friday – Sunday, from 12-6 and by appointment. For further information or images, please contact the gallery at info@baileygallery.com or 518.828.6680.