Two Trees in Balance

May 17 – August 30, 2015 Opening: May 17, 2015 (3 – 6pm)

Artist

Gabriela Albergaria’s work involves one territory: Nature. Through drawing, photography, and sculpture the artist seeks to examine and deconstruct the cultural and social beliefs surrounding images of the natural. Albergaria builds on these concepts with Two Trees in Balance at Socrates Sculpture Park, where she has erected a 10-foot concrete wall adorned with two suspended trees. For the artist, Two Trees in Balance is “the moment where human and natural terrains intersect.”
As part of her installation, Albergaria has meticulously reconstructed dozens of branches and tree stumps salvaged from across New York City into two new trees, which she suspends diagonally off of the ground from a steel cable. Each tree hovers between the wall and the earth, poised in a precarious state by their own equal weight. Visually the piece implies suspended movement – simultaneous growth and decay – and the effort required to maintain that balance. With Two Trees in Balance, the artist manipulates preconceived expectations of what the natural should look like, as well as the fictional beliefs that we use to conjure the natural world.

Two Trees in Balance opened at Socrates Sculpture Park in
Long Island City, Queens, on Sunday, May 17th from 3:00-6:00PM.

ABOUT GABRIELA ALBERGARIA

www.gabrielaalbergaria.com
Since 1999 Albergaria has exhibited regularly around the world. Recent solo shows include in Galeria Vermelho, São Paolo and Hacienda La Trinidad Parque Cultural, Caracas, Venezuela (2013). Group exhibitions include Prickley, tender and steamy, Artists in the Hothouse, Wave Hill Garden, Glyndor Gallery, New York (2014), and “Do barroco para o barroco – está a arte contemporânea”, Casa da Parra, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2013). Her work has been featured at the 1a Bienal de Montevideo (2012); Do Not Destroy, Trees Art and Jewish Thought, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco (2012); Reverse Position (Invertir la Posición), Galeria Wu, Lima, 2012 ; Ecológica, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2010; kurs: the tree, Fuglsang Kunstmuseum, Toreby, Denmark (2009). Residencies include the Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center (Winter Workshop 2012), Villa Arson , Centre National d’ Art Contemporain , Nice , France (2008 ) and the University of Oxford Botanic Garden in collaboration with The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art , Oxford (2009/2010).

Albergaria is currently participating in a residency at Residency Unlimited in New York.

SUPPORT

The park’s 2015 Exhibition Program is supported, in part, with generous funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Charina Foundation, Mark di Suvero, Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art, Jerome Foundation, Agnes Gund, Lambent Foundation, Ronay and Richard Menschel, Ivana Mestrovic, The New York Community Trust, Plant Specialists, the David Rockefeller Fund, Shelley and Donald Rubin, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W. Smith, Spacetime C. C.; and contributions from our Board of Directors.

These programs are also funded, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo, and the New York State Legislature and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.