NO MAN’S LAND

Radka Salcmannova, Theresa Bloise, and Su A Chae
On view: February 7 – March 7, 2021

NO MAN’S LAND features the mysterious, blue creations of Radka Salcmannova, large scale painting and works on paper by Theresa Bloise and Su A Chae’s abstracted mindscapes. 

Theresa Bloise’s monumental painting ‘Drippy Mountain’ is featured on the back wall of the gallery, majestically looking out over a field of mysterious Salcmannova sculptures. Their organic shapes, in varying hues of blue, from deep cobalt to greenish turquoise, suggest infinite watery worlds. The material —silicone— strongly resembles the organic world, reminding of a wild element of nature, yet, it’s not organic at all, but a human invention.

Science that feels like science fiction inspires Bloise’s most recent paintings. She uses small earthly objects as a reference, meteorite like slag stones and pebbles on the sidewalk. Collecting and arranging small objects to create a scene meant to inspire awe is a routine practice in the way she works. The work is intended to be read as both still life and landscape: microscopic and monumental, primordial and apocalyptic. 

Su A Chae is also interested in the micro and the macro, as well as the tension between interior and exterior and the organic and mechanical. In her work she uses abstraction as a means to extract her cultural and autobiographical identity, investigating the associated ambivalence thereof. She uses asymmetrical balance of shapes, patterns, colors, and textures to deliberately create paradoxical spaces.

The grids, lattice and checkerboard-like structures resemble fences (and gates) of a physical, psychological and cultural barrier that Chae experienced since she moved to the United States. She braids organic and biological elements into her geometrical abstractions. The animal skin, blood vessels, blood cells, DNA, flower petals, leaf veins, and tree branches appear frequently in her recent work as metaphorical imagery as well as a counter-balancing element. 

Radka Salcmannova’s projects span the fine arts, experimental installation and fashion. Mixing different media allows her to transgress categories that traditionally define a work of art. The two large sculptures named ‘Blue Coral’ are made from silicone dresses she created for the New York Fashion Week at Pier59 Studio, and the Los Angeles Fashion Week. The pieces were also used in numerous photoshoots and music videos. After all these events, she melted and reworked them, resulting in the pieces now on view.

Our current exhibition NO MAN’S LAND searched to describe the organic nature of the universe. Each artist has created a unique platform from which to view and depict the cosmos.

Theresa Bloise (Brooklyn, NY) received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design where she studied for a year in Rome as part of RISD’s European Honors Program. She has shown her work at Ortega y Gasset, Paradice Palase, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Smack Mellon, Kentler International Drawing Space, PS122 Gallery and Governor’s Island. Her work has been reviewed in the Brooklyn Rail and the New York Times. She has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Lower East Side Printshop, the Wassaic Project and the Bronx Museum. In 2010 she received a New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship.

Radka Salcmannova (Brooklyn, NY) graduated from the Academy of Art Architecture and Design in Prague, Czech Republic in 2009. ‘Untitled’ will be her second show with 5-50 Gallery, after being included in ‘No-man spirits our Dust’, curated by Sarah Walko. In 2016 Salcmannova received an FCA grant. She was nominated as one of the ‘25 artist to watch’ by Modern Painter magazine in 2015. Since then, Radka exhibited her work at several solo and group exhibition globally in New York, Berlin, Vienna, Czech Republic and Los Angeles.

Su A Chae (Bloomington, IN) received her MFA in Painting from Indiana University Bloomington and an MA and a BA in Business from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. Her work has been exhibited at Ortega y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn, the Painting Center in New York, the Icebox Project Space in Philadelphia, the Harrison Center in Indianapolis, Young Space (online), among others. Her work has been featured in publications as Studio Visit Magazine, Create! Magazine, Maake, Friend of The Artist and Herald-Times. Sua A Chae was an artist-in-residence at Vermont Studio Center. 

Download the Press Release, including image list, here.