Sarah Tortora

Tomorrow

OCTOBER 8 - NOVEMBER 14, 2020

OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 11AM-5PM

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C. Grimaldis Gallery is pleased to present Tomorrow, a solo exhibition of works by Sarah Tortora. Inspired by canonical statues, urban infrastructure, and museological displays, Tortora creates mixed media sculptures which reimagine allegorical motifs from a contemporary lens.

Tortora’s work references ancient mythologies, building on a lineage of Art and Archive. Yet her sculptures present the viewer with a sort of warped anachronism, building works with what looks to be remnants of antiquity, but is rather 21st century detritus. She ornaments her pieces with self- referential signage and facsimiles of archetypal objects. The awkwardness of this contradiction between the Classical and the DIY inspires a psychic displacement necessary to comprehend the cultural displacement that the sculptures induce.

Tomorrow gives space for questions about anthropocentric privilege, thinking about objects as artifacts within the vast scale of geological time. Textured surfaces and pastel colors give way for a more playful understanding of legacy. Geometric forms and Cubist facades create cartoonish recreations of iconography. Tortora accepts the premise that “every equestrian monument is a Trojan horse,” and that Art is meant to operate in unison with language and communication.

Sarah Tortora (b. 1988, New Haven, CT) received an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, and served as a Lecturer of Contemporary Art at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia while in attendance. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Pink Noise Projects (Philadelphia, PA), GRIN (Providence, RI), Reynolds Fine Art (New Haven, CT), and CAS Arts Center (Livingston Manor, NY). Recent group exhibitions featuring Tortora’s work have been held at Ulterior Gallery (NYC), Fjord (Philadelphia), Camayuhs (Atlanta) and Tiger Strikes Asteroid (NYC, LA). She was the 2015-2016 Alice C. Cole ‘42 Fellow in Studio Art at Wellesley College, and from 2017-2018 was a yearlong artist-in-residence as the Visual Arts Coordinator at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. Tortora currently lives/works between Philadelphia and New York City.