Inna Babaeva 

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What is my work about?

I use mass-produced objects that are widely available for purchase and consumption, and combine them with forms that I make myself. The resulting outcomes undermine the original intended purpose of the objects and turn them into absurd structures. I combine colors of commercially available objects and materials with my own mixed colors painted on a surface of handmade sculptures. I appropriate my own sculptures and found objects into photo prints on plexiglass to explore different degrees of materiality of visual images. My work explores a territory where the opposites meet: the functional and the useless, the sleek and the unruly, the omnipresent and the unique, the tangible and the illusive, the abstraction and the depiction.

 

Artist Statement

My work recycles mass-produced objects that are widely available for purchase and consumption and other industrial purpose materials. I fuse them with often grotesque and ecto-tropic forms that I create from insulating construction foam. I combine the innate color of the commercially produced objects and materials with colors that I carefully choose and apply myself. The resulting outcomes undermine the originally intended purpose of these objects and turn them into structures that look functional but are, instead, absurd: music stands have no place for notes in “Intro”, water in pails replaced with expanding matter in “Mad Love” and “Twenty Seven”, and a bicycle mirror’s rear view is blocked in “Just Another Narcissus”.

In my recent sculptures, I have been exploring the possibilities of reanimation or reincarnation of found objects, old photographs, and even parts of my own sculptures. For example, the physical plasmalike matter of “Mad Love” and “Twenty Seven”, made of expanding insulating foam, have found a new existence in “Oda” and in “All She Wrote”. The overtly textural and tangible forms of the works dematerialize into two-dimensional images on a transparent surface of plexiglas panels that further dissipate into their own reflection. In “Take a Chance”, brightly painted decorative feathers are caught by the camera in a frozen moment of its falling. Momentarily existing large soap bubbles find their permanency printed onto a plexiglas surface in “Return to Beaubourg”.

Engaged in contemplation about mass production, recycling, function, materiality, gravity, and time, I strive to create and inhabit a world where mundane objects can be unique, space can be altered, time can stop, and gravity can be an illusion.

 

CV

EDUCATION

2003, MFA Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University

2001, BFA Florida Atlantic University

SELECTED SOLO and GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2014

Family Style, Curated by Julie Torres, Formerly Pocket Utopia, New York, NY

Palimpsest, Inna Babaeva and Lauren Clay, two person exhibition,

Underdonk, Brooklyn, NY Spitball, curated by Progress Report,

Storefront Ten Eyck, Brooklyn, NY Shrink It, Pink It, curated by Irena Jurek and Diana Buckley,

Cathouse FUNeral, Brooklyn,NY

Painting in the Expanded Field, Mary S. Byrd Gallery at Georgia Regents University, Augusta, GA

2013

Punchline, curated by Kevin Daly, The Institute Library, New Haven, CT

End Times, curated by HKJB, Sphinx, New York, NY

Lost and Found, curated by Fran Holstrom, Hal Bromm Gallery, New York,NY

Deep Cuts, curated by David Humphrey and Wendy White, Anna Kustera Gallery, New York, NY

2012

Peaces on Earth, Sardine, Brooklyn, NY

If you think I am sexy, curated by Diana Buckley and Irena Jurek, Chashama, New York, NY

Wavers, curated by EJ Hauser and Rob Nadeau, Brooklyn, NY

2011

Snowclones. curated by Benjamin King and Rob Nadeau, ARTBLOGARTBLOG, New York, NY

Art Book Club Presents, curated by Fran Holstrom, St, Cecilia’s Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

The Working Title, curated by Kris Chatterson and Vince Contarino, Bronx River Art Center, NY

2010 B

enefit for Clare Amory, David Zwirner, New York, NY

Anti Anti/Non Non, curated by Fran Holstrom, Hal Bromm Gallery, New York

Domestic City:Methodology and Intuition, curated by Nichole van Beek and Vince Contarino, Kidd Yellin, Brooklyn, NY

Sprezzatura, curated by Candice Kehoe, Guilford Art Center, Guilford,CT

2009 System:system, curated by Adam Henry and Christina Vassallo, St, Cecilia’s Convent, Brooklyn, NY

I wanna be somewhere, New York, NY, curated by Jon Lutz Central&Remote, Long Island City, NY, curated by Jon Lutz

2004 BAM Benefit, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY

Outside inside, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami, FL

2003

Here Passed, solo show, Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, West Palm Beach,FL

I Cannot Stay Here Too Long, solo show, Eaton Fine Art, West Palm Beach,FL

 

SCHOLARSHIPS & GRANTS

Joan Mitchell Foundation scholarship Women in the Visual Arts grant

 

COLLECTIONS

Flint Institute of Arts Museum, Flint MI The Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for the Book Arts, Boca Raton, FL

 

VISITING ARTIST LECTURES

Georgia Regents University, Augusta, GA

Drew University, Madison, NJ

 

RESIDENCY

2006

Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Fl

 

PRESS

“The new psychedelia”, Sleek Magazine, Berlin (Summer 2012)

Cloutier, Marcie, “Russian-­‐born artist ” Palm Beach Daily News, (May 1, 2003), p.A1&7

Brink, Bob, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, Palm Beach Illustrated, (May 2003), p.54

Schwan, Gary, “Five from the Area,” Art News, (February, 2002), p.133

Mason, Deborah, ” Color Them Bright,” Vision, (Volume 4, issue 3, 2001), p.46

Schwan, Gary, “Eaton Presents Local Artwork”, The Palm Beach Post, (October 14, 2001), p.1-­‐3

ONLINE MAGAZINES AND BLOGS REFERENCES

Gorky’s Granddaughter, October 2013

Fussed Magazine, Ones to watch: Inna Babaeva, June 2012

We Heart Magazine, Art and Culture, March 2012

Pencil in the studio, by Maria Calandra, March 2012

New American Paintings Blog, Matthew Smith in Interview with Progress Report, October 20, 2011

Artnet Magazine, By Emily Nathan, June 2011

Artcritical, by Stephen Maine, April 23 2011 16 Miles of String, by Andrew Russeth, April 07, 2011

Painters’Table. The Working Title:3 interviews, by Jon Lutz via Progress Report Old Gold by Daily Operations, Interview with John Lutz, September 18 2009

Bomblog, Jon Lutz in interview with Kris Chatterson, July 7, 2009