Reconstructing a Midtown Forest

Reconstructing a Midtown Forest
by Raylene Gorum

chashama Donnell Windows
20 West 53rd Street
New York, NY
across from MoMA)

On view 24 hours a day: May 7 — May 29, 2011
Artist reception: Thursday May 26, from 7-9pm

According to the Welikia Project (which remaps the 1609 landscape), this site was wooded with an inhabited meadow off to the Southwest and the great trail of what we know as Broadway tucked through these hilly trees. “Reconstructing a Midtown Forest” takes this as a point of inspiration, a fantastical superposition of ecological nostalgia over this thoroughly modern site.

Here the trees are absent, the foliage is structural and the modern world is a living reflection upon all materials used. When the viewer looks in to see behind these absent trees, she sees the present world, layered with hyper-colored scrim, reflecting back. A flickering botanical mystery to inhabit for half of a Manhattan block. This hyper-real landscape is created with hand silk-screened tessellated origami shapes, painted acetate and reflective Mylar.

Ms Gorum loves the layering of art over reality. Her work comes alive in the unclaimed space between art and architecture, slipping out of the traditional frame to cascade across windows and unsuspecting walls for interaction with viewers like you.

This installation is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

About the Artist:
Raylene Gorum’s books and fantastical urban portraits have been exhibited in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Taipei, and Brazil. Last year, she began translating her artistic proposals to an architectural scale in collaboration with the Ridgewood Times Building in Queens, Northside Piers in Williamsburg and the Gowanus Ballroom.

Raylene earned a Bachelors of Architecture from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and École d’Architecture, Paris, and also studied printmaking at Central St. Martin’s, London. Professionally engaged in refining blueprints and bringing them to fruition in the real world, she dedicated her remaining time to crafting artistic proposals of urban re-imaginings.

She is most grateful to Mike Uy, Eric Gjerde, her all-star assembly team and to chashama for organizing such amazing opportunities for artists like herself.

For more information on the artist, please visit:
www.raylenegorum.com