To celebrate the culmination of their six-month residency in the Museum’s Artist Studios, artists Syd Abady, Reade Bryan, and MAD Artist Fellow Carolina Jiménez will each speak about their respective practices. Following the talks, visitors will have the opportunity to meet the artists in their studios and see their work created at MAD.

This event is free with registration.

SCHEDULE

• 6:30-7:15 pm: artist talks in the classroom
• 7:15-8 pm: open studios on Floor 6

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Syd Abady explores the politics and personalities of home spaces through a textiles-based practice. At MAD, she used the slow-moving, domestic technique of needlepoint to reconsider the significance of seemingly mundane public signifiers, such as maps and real estate signs, that dictate both our public and private lives. Abady received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Textiles and Nature, Culture, Sustainability Studies with an emphasis on Urban Studies. She has exhibited throughout the US, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA LA) and Miami Art Week.

Carolina Jiménez creates “woven paintings,” a mode of image-making that examines the boundaries between fiber and painting. From afar, the shimmering materiality and bold geometry are reminiscent of color-field abstraction. Upon closer viewing, the aggregation of yarns held in tension and repose and the shifting colors of natural dyes reveal a methodology as deeply indebted to craft techniques as to the logic of abstract expressionism. In both contexts, honoring the material leads the way to the creation of form. Jiménez’ central focus of work remains the body as a site for memory; her works function as traditional paintings as much as sites of labor and studies of historical technique. Influenced by her background in architecture, these woven paintings reflect a careful calibration of size and scale. They are monuments into which the past is woven, unraveled, and stretched.

Reade Bryan produces paintings on sheer silk organza, relying on a wax resist and dye technique similar to that of batik. The translucent paintings overlap and align within the metal framework of an installation, representing selected geographic regions at different intervals in history via satellite, radar reflectivity, and other system-based imagery. Originally from Houston, TX, Bryan earned a BFA from Parsons School of Design in 2006. He has been the recipient of the AIM program (2013), which culminated with the exhibition Bronx Calling, organized by the Bronx Museum. His solo shows include REFLEX at Signal Gallery (2013), Inhabited at Wave Hill (2014), and Geomorphic Agents at SmackMellon (2021). He currently lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.

Image (from left): Winter’s Sunset by the Cliffs, Carolina Jiménez, Photo: Jeff Chung; Signs [No. 1], Syd Abady, Photo: Ry Rocklen; Thirty Years, Reade Bryan, Image courtesy of Smack Mellon, Photo: Etienne Frossard.