Winston Wachter Fine Art, New York presents Things Arranged Neatly, a solo exhibition by Jil Weinstock offering all the gratification the title implies. In her new body of work, Weinstock examines the human tendency to collect and group things not for their usefulness or monetary value, but for their emotional value as tangible links to the past. Weinstock continues to explore rubber as a preservation material, binding together both objects and memories, like fossils suspended in amber. Transforming collections of common objects, the artist creates tension between utility and memory, abstraction and narrative.
Groups of oft-forgotten items are excavated, categorized, and exhibited for careful study, resembling cabinets of curiosities of centuries past. Some displays, like that of the drawer contents of a lost loved one, explore the nostalgic value imparted on things. Others, such as the arrangements of oven knobs or cast-off keys, examine items kept for anticipated use or simply forgotten. Removed from the context of utility or personal memory, the objects form narratives among themselves. Suspended in rubber and lit from behind, the items are not illuminated but silhouetted, reducing them to shapes. Drawing tools arranged as neatly as surgical instruments form a geometric abstraction, and cast-off toys evoke the all-over canvases of Abstract Expressionism. The rubber itself is at once industrial and supple, flexible, flesh-like. Things Arranged Neatly evokes industrial formalism while maintaining nostalgic warmth, encouraging viewers to consider the shapes of their own mundane items, the tucked-away clutter and the things carried everywhere.
Jil Weinstock was born in Los Angeles, California and currently works and resides in New York City. She studied at the University of California Berkeley where she received her MFA and BFA. Weinstock has been an Artist in Residence at the Museum of Art and Design in New York, NY. She is the recipient of a McGarth Grant and the Walter Gropius Award. Her work has been featured publications including the Huffington Post, Art in America, and Art News.
