Happy Sunny Jade
Elizabeth Atterbury
May 14–June 25, 2016

Opening Reception
Saturday, May 14
5:00–8:00pm

Download Exhibition Brochure

Document is pleased to present Happy Sunny Jade, Elizabeth Atterbury’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The show includes recent photographs and sculptures that demonstrate her fluid negotiation of two and three dimensions. Meandering between image and object, Atterbury makes reference to cultural and geographical points of origin.

Many of Atterbury’s black-and-white photographs are “abstract”—a paradox for straight photography, which is always tethered to the world. Closer inspection reveals them to be compositions of humble, familiar materials such as cut cardboard and sand. Alternating between areas of light and dark, the cardboard photos produce convincing interplays between flatness and depth. Arrayed horizontally so that their corrugated innards align on the vertical axis, the cardboard strips produce dense grids. “I wanted to create a space that felt infinitely deep,” the artist recalls, “like an endless corridor of mirrors, but at the same time impenetrable, like when a window is removed from a building and filled in with brick.” The Logogram series accentuates these effects by tilting some cardboard bands onto diagonal axes, imagining them as stills from of a stop-motion collage where different cut bands move and arrange and rearrange and settle, constructing a word or phrase.

The wooden and steel sculptures in this exhibition take something like the reverse approach, arranging networks of ambiguous forms that derive from highly specific, lived references. Sunny Side, FL, a group of steel sculptures, painted black, creates in miniature an imaginary sculpture park from the artist’s hometown. Actual structures and forms, places, people, and ideas are reduced and abstracted into simple, modernist shapes and hieroglyphs: a bull shark, palm trees, the sun rising in the west, the artist’s grandmother or mother – hair down, a tomb, the manicured landscape, the shaped hedges, modern houses, Noguchi’s Intetra, Mist Fountain….physicalized shadows of a place that is perpetually in the sun. Long Life, on the other hand, adapts the design from generic noodle bowls into a continuous loping form that recalls a pre-Colombian architectural design.

Atterbury’s sand photographs yield highly tactile surfaces that serve as backdrops for mark making. In fact, the artist’s three-dimensional objects have produced these marks, yoking her sculpture and photography together. The artist conceives of a mythic scenario for these marks: an “idle ancient” has produced them. This ancient, or ancestor, passes the time, making unconscious marks in the sand – like picking blades of grass. In contrast to this, she adds Still Life with Popcorn and Pits, a kitchen still-life with avocado pits sitting in a glass of water, a reminder for the real world that acts or represents an actual ‘location’ for the other work to exist.

Elizabeth Atterbury (born 1982, West Palm Beach, FL) lives and works in Portland, Maine. Recent solo and group shows include The Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville; kijidome, Boston; Document, Chicago; TSA, Brooklyn; Bodega, Philadelphia/New York; KANSAS, New York; and The ICA at Maine College of Art, Portland, among others. In the Middle, An Oasis, a monograph of her work, was published by Bodega Press in 2013. She received her BA from Hampshire College and her MFA from MassArt.

Works

Elizabeth Atterbury, Still Life with Popcorn and Pits, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 11 x 14 in, Edition of 3

Elizabeth Atterbury, Logogram II, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, The Well, The Wall, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in, Edition of 3

Elizabeth Atterbury, Logogram III, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Beach Woks (Marks of a Tool II), 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in, Edition of 3

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Tomb), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 12 x 7 1/2 x 5 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (The Cut), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 13 1/2 x 28 1/2 x 1 1/4 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Sunset Hedge), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 1 1/2 x 16 x 2 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Small House), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 1 x 16 3/4 x 14 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Paper Cut / Hedge), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 10 x 9 x 1 3/4 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Palms), 2015, Enamel paint, steel, 17 1/2 x 11 x 16 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Noguchi's Intetra, Mist Fountain), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 11 x 9 1/2 x 9 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Lawn), 2016, Enamel paint, steel 9 x 9 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Bull Shark), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 2 1/2 x 18 x 1 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Big House), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 16 x 18 x 6 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Mom or Baba, hair down), 2016

Elizabeth Atterbury, Relief (China White), 2015, Plywood and paint, 33 x 48 x 1 3/4 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Still Idle Ancients, 2016

Elizabeth Atterbury, Happy Sunny Jade (detail), 2016

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Elizabeth Atterbury, Happy Sunny Jade (detail), 2016

Elizabeth Atterbury, Still Life with Popcorn and Pits, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 11 x 14 in, Edition of 3

Elizabeth Atterbury, Logogram II, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, The Well, The Wall, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in, Edition of 3

Elizabeth Atterbury, Logogram III, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Beach Woks (Marks of a Tool II), 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in, Edition of 3

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Tomb), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 12 x 7 1/2 x 5 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (The Cut), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 13 1/2 x 28 1/2 x 1 1/4 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Sunset Hedge), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 1 1/2 x 16 x 2 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Small House), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 1 x 16 3/4 x 14 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Paper Cut / Hedge), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 10 x 9 x 1 3/4 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Palms), 2015, Enamel paint, steel, 17 1/2 x 11 x 16 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Noguchi's Intetra, Mist Fountain), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 11 x 9 1/2 x 9 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Lawn), 2016, Enamel paint, steel 9 x 9 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Bull Shark), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 2 1/2 x 18 x 1 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Big House), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 16 x 18 x 6 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Mom or Baba, hair down), 2016

Elizabeth Atterbury, Relief (China White), 2015, Plywood and paint, 33 x 48 x 1 3/4 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Still Idle Ancients, 2016

Elizabeth Atterbury, Happy Sunny Jade (detail), 2016

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Installation view at DOCUMENT

Elizabeth Atterbury, Happy Sunny Jade (detail), 2016