December 3 – January 9, 2010

Julie Peppito: Super Bumpy

Images

Press Release

SUPER BUMPY Recent sculpture, Paintings and works on paper.

The sales-circular-like coupon and bargain-filled exhibit pamphlet announcing Julie Peppito’s "Super Bumpy" exhibition was inspired by the economic downturn and it's effects on the art market. If Takashi Murakami's Superflat art movement revels in the triumph of commerce and mass-production, then "Super-Bumpy" hails a return to more humble, personal, and idiosyncratic art-making.

Clearly, the art world has been struggling along with the rest of our society since the collapse of the real estate market and our banking system. Even though Murakami along with Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and many others have accepted art as a commodity there is still a resistance to recognizing it as one. By referencing Murakami's "Superflat" with the title "Super Bumpy" Peppito acknowledges her relationship to art as part of the market and her personal struggle by offering coupons for her work.

The artist’s individual pieces are quite literally bumpy. For each work she collects discarded toys, figurines, packaging and other objects and binds them together. She then paints, draws and sews detailed lines and narratives that merge them into cake-like paintings and sculptures that resemble various organisms such as plants and insects. The process is time-consuming, and the results are organic and full of detail and texture.

The is Julie Peppito’s second exhibition at Heskin Contemporary. Ms. Peppito received her BFA at the Cooper Union School of art in New York City, and received her MFA from Alfred University Alfred, New York. She also attended the Academie Minerva in the Netherlands and has been the recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Grant and a NYFA Fellowship in sculpture.