Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space is pleased to present Little Boxes, a solo exhibition by Anne Mourier, curated by Risa Shoup. Nestled amongst the food and kitchenware vendors of the Essex Market, this solo exhibition spurs an immediate conversation about household and family – subjects at the core of Anne Mourier’s work.
Delicate, miniature domestic scenes form contained narratives, born of Mourier’s personal reflections on childhood, family, and heredity. Encapsulated under glass or in wooden shadowboxes, these episodic contemplations are stagings of the discordance between the façade and the fact of the matter, between the romance of our ideals and the corners they work us into.
Curtains of dishtowels drawn across the gallery windows and doors obscure all contents of the exhibition within. Inside, a minimalistic configuration of white pedestals and a partition wall convey a curious sense of vacancy, while several pairs of binoculars at the center of the gallery inquisitively suggest closer looking. Gradual, attentive navigation of the modified floor plan reveals the obscure corners, seams, and spaces that now bear host to miniature domestic scenes or interiors inspired by the vendors of the Market. Though seemingly isolated events, these site-specific installations and framed works’ detailed distortions in scale subtly serve as a compass connecting to other potentially hidden pieces. Staggered, suspended, inverted, buried, and covered, Little Boxes challenges conceptions of physical space, personal space, and the lives we lead within them.
French artist Anne Mourier maintains a studio at The Invisible Dog Art Center, in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn. She mounted her 2013 solo exhibition Cleaning It Up at the Glass House @ The Invisible Dog, an innovative gallery space she designed from reclaimed windows. In February of 2014 she installed Caché, her first international solo exhibition at the Alliance Française, Venice, Italy. Other recent group shows that featured Mourier’s work include Readymade@100, American University Museum, Washington, D.C.; Generations IX, AIR Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; and The Empty Nest, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Larchmont, NY. Mourier’s work is represented by and exhibited regularly at the Muriel Guépin Gallery, in NYC, and Sohn Fine Art, in Stockbridge, MA.
Risa Shoup is the Associate Director of The Invisible Dog Art Center, Brooklyn, and her passion is to develop unique and accessible cultural spaces from existing building stock. Her current project is Brooklyn Commune, an ongoing research effort and series of public conversations investigating the value of labor and availability of financial and physical resources in the arts. In the past she has worked with BRIC Arts Media to develop their Fireworks Residency as well as with the Wassaic Project and chashama, in consulting and leading programmatic roles respectively. She is also completing her studies for a master’s in City & Regional Planning at the Pratt Institute. Shoup studies the production of space for the arts and other cultural uses. She has been a fellow at the Pratt Center for Community Development, and she has served as a research fellow for several planners affiliated with the Pratt Center on a community-based plan for the rezoning of Manhattan’s Chinatown.
Cuchifritos is FREE to the public and handicap accessible. Located inside Essex Street Market at the south end nearest Delancey.
Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space is a program of Artists Alliance Inc., a 501c3 not for profit organization located on the Lower East Side of New York City within the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center. Cuchifritos is supported in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. This program is made possible by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. We thank the following for their generous support: Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York City Economic Development Corporation and individual supporters of Artists Alliance Inc. Special thanks go to our team of dedicated volunteers, without whom this program would not be possible.