ecoartspace

ecoartspace:
Mary Mattingly and Jean Shin interviewed by Amy Lipton

Wednesday, October 17, 2018
6 to 8pm

Mary Mattingly, Eagle Mine, Michigan, 2016. Courtesy of the artist. [Image Description: An aerial view of a mine surrounded by lush green forest and roads. Pits, pools, cars, and buildings make up the the grounds of mine.]

Amy Lipton, East Coast director of ecoartspace, was among the first curators to commission temporary, site-specific installations in a natural environment. Mary Mattingly and Jean Shin, whose works figure prominently within Sedimentations: Assemblage as Social Repair, were interviewed by Lipton as part of ecoartspace’s ongoing interview series.

Bios 

Amy Lipton was the owner and director of Amy Lipton Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in New York City from 1986 – 1996 where she represented over 20 artists including Polly Apfelbaum, Mel Chin, Amy Sillman and Sue Williams. Lipton was Curator at Abington Art Center in Philadelphia and Director of The Fields Sculpture Park at Omi International Art Center, Ghent, NY. She is currently an independent curator and has been co-director of ecoartspace, a non profit organization dedicated to raising environmental awareness in the arts since 1999. Lipton has collaborated with hundreds of artists and partnered with numerous arts and environmental organizations to produce exhibitions, public art works, programs, discussions, events and publications. Her pioneering ecological art exhibition and accompanying book Ecovention was presented at the CAC Cincinnati in 2002. She has organized exhibitions for museums, galleries, sculpture parks, universities, environmental centers, corporate offices, and in the public realm. Her recent exhibitions include, FOODshed: Agriculture and Art in Action at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; Jackie Brookner: Of Nature at Wave Hill, Bronx, NY; and Tipping Points: Artists Address the Climate Crises atBergen Community College, Bergen, NJ. She has written essays and articles for books and publications including The New Earthwork, Art, Action, Agency and reviews for Sculpture Magazine.

Mary Mattingly is an artist based in New York City. She founded a floating food forest in New York called Swale and recently completed Pull for the International Havana Biennial with the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de la Habana and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Mattingly’s work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, the Parrish Art Museum, the Seoul Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and the Palais de Tokyo. Her work has been featured in Art in America, Artforum, The New York Times, Le Monde, New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and on Art21. Her work has been included in books such as the Whitechapel/MIT Press Documents of Contemporary Art series titled Nature, and Henry Sayer’s A World of Art, 8th edition.

Jean Shin is an artist recognized for her site-specific installations that transform everyday objects into elegant expressions of identity and community engagement. Her work is distinguished by her labor-intensive process and immersive environments that reflect collective issues that we face as a society. Her work has been widely exhibited in major national and international museums, inclusive of solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona, and Crow Collection in Dallas.

As an accomplished artist practicing in the public realm, she also realizes large-scale, site-specific permanent installations commissioned by major public agencies on the federal level (US General Services Administration) as well as local city and arts for transit programs (New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority and Percent for the Art programs, etc.). She recently completed a landmark commission for New York City MTA’s Second Avenue Subway at the 63rd Street station.

In recognition of excellence, she has received numerous awards including two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Architecture/Environmental Structures (2008) and Sculpture (2003), Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Art Award.  Her works and interviews have been featured in many publications including Frieze Art, Flash Art, Tema Celeste, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, Artnews, and The New York Times.

Born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in the United States, Shin attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1999 and received a BFA and MS from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She is a tenured Adjunct Professor of Fine Art at Pratt Institute. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. www.jeanshin.com