It was literally the wreck of jewels and the crash of gems…
June 28 - August 17, 2018
Kate Newby and Daniel Rios Rodriguez
PRESS RELEASE
You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves. / Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. / Meanwhile the world goes on. / Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain / are moving across the landscapes, / over the prairies and the deep trees, / the mountains and the rivers. / Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, / are heading home again. / Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination, / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things. [1]
Nicelle Beauchene Gallery is pleased to announce It was literally the wreck of jewels and the crash of gems..., a two-person exhibition by Kate Newby and Daniel Rios Rodriguez. Exhibiting together for the first time, the artists explore ways their practices intersect and diverge with a shared focus on the fundamental elements of making—movement, repetition, and time—and a reverence for materiality.
Using discarded and organic materials gathered during walks in the San Antonio River Valley where he lives, Rodriguez incorporates shells, feathers, old rope, and scraps of wood into his assemblages. The shaped panels form idiosyncratic mountain ranges and riverbeds, each delicate tableau reflects and refracts the artist’s surroundings.
In It was literally the wreck of jewels and the crash of gems..., Rodriguez uses found materials that have been soaked, sun drenched, and eroded by wind or water, while Newby uses tools to manufacture a weathered appearance. For the artists, this serves as an attempt to reintegrate their creations into the natural world and to document their visual landscapes. The patina of the sun and rain is a story. The smoothed surface of a stone is a record of time.
Newby’s installations and works in glass, ceramic, brick, and rope respond to, interact with and disrupt their environment. She recontextualizes utilitarian materials in carefully considered vignettes, drawing inspiration from the intersections of nature and the manufactured. Each work is composed through an amorphous, gradual process of building and erasure.