New Film by JKG in Major Exhibition Focused on Pattern, Repetition and Motif

New York, NY – A new film by Julia K. Gleich has been included in a major exhibition surveying new work in pattern, repetition and motif in New York at 1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery (btwn 51st and 52nd Street, NYC). Titled between a place and candy: new works in pattern + repetition + motif, the exhibition brings together a diverse selection of artists where pattern, repetition, and motif play vital roles in the inspiration, development and completion of their work. New York, NY – A major exhibition surveying new work in pattern, repetition and motif has opened in New York at 1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery (btwn 51st and 52nd Street, NYC). Titled between a place and candy: new works in pattern + repetition + motif, the exhibition brings together a diverse selection of artists where pattern, repetition, and motif play vital roles in the inspiration, development and completion of their work. Each has devised a system or strategy for composing ideas, yet all retain a sense of improvisation in the process. Curated by Jason Andrew and organized by Norte Maar the exhibition includes the work of 30 artist including a new film by Julia K. Gleich.

Julia K Gleich’s choreographies straddle classical and modern forms while drawing from her lifelong interest in mathematical principles. Her new video work, titled Combinatorics: a study of infinite or countable discrete structures, hones in on the daily technique of repeated patterns of ballet. The vocabulary appears finite and yet there are endlessly variable sequences borne of the simple material of a ballet class, the tendu for example: a dancer’s toe inscribes a series of directions and arcs in an endless variety of combinations. At once familiar and new, the body defines the space; the mind meditates on the repetition.

Dance writer Fennella Kennedy on her blog the headtail connection writes of the exhibition:

Many of the pieces have a vibrant kinetic energy, frequently through the play of optical illusion: the simplest of patterns, such as Joan Witek’s "Massai" confounding our mind’s attempt to render them static and comprehensible. Meanwhile the work that is most conceptually movement-oriented, Julia Gleich’s "Combinatorics: a study of infinite or countable discrete structures" becomes a meditative contemplation of atomic space, and the variation in cellular replication: a dancer’s feet tracing pathways like electrons around a nucleus, the gesture at once always the same and yet never duplicated.

In 2013, Gleich's film Decker Fall was featured in To be a Lady, also on view at 1285 Avenue of the Americas and curated by Jason Andrew. The exhibition featuring a survey of historic, mid-career, and emerging work by women which included work by Louise Bourgeois, Louise Nevelson, Elizabeth Murray, Leonare Tawney and others.

between a place and candy continues through June 12 with gallery hours Monday-Friday, 8am-6pm.