Stellarhighway is pleased to present Where Parting Is No More by Carolyn Oberst. The exhibition features a selection of works from Oberst’s series of twenty-four sculptural paintings wrought from antique mirror frames separated from their previously-conjoined dressers. Over the course of a decade (1989-1998), Oberst refurbished these discarded dresser-backs, replacing broken mirror with painted canvas and scrying a cryptic realm of discontinuous but interrelated experiences, real and imagined. As art history professor and gallerist Mary Delahoyd wrote about the series for a show at her eponymous gallery/loft space in 1992:
“Carolyn Oberst's works occupy a fragile place between the tangible reality of familiar things and the fantasy life of the mind, between an ordinary past that their dresser-back mirror frames held and an eerie present that their new imagery intimates. The physicality of these frames impels a painted tactility of precise, thick touches and intense, saturated colors. However, the quirky wood patterns suggest that all may not be so clear or placid; the encapsulated scenes of startling conjunctions and sudden scale changes affirm this rumbling undercurrent. Bountiful still lifes fill the pictorial field to a suffocating limit, thereby turning fecundity into excess, and spit out one detail onto a three-dimensional shelf life. Cool, lush landscapes cradle outsized children who seem to have expanded from the burgeoning energy coursing through this universe. Large stories emerge from intimate settings, the beings and objects that occupy them claiming a visual power beyond their material bounds.”
This presentation is Oberst’s first display of her dresser-back series since its initial reception at Willoughby Sharp Gallery and subsequent exhibition at Mary Delahoyd Gallery in the early 1990s. Delahoyd, a much-loved professor of Art History at Sarah Lawrence College, ran a project space from her SoHo loft until she handed the reins to Pavel Zoubek in 1997, her former student. Willoughby Sharp is best known as an artist, curator and publisher, having founded Avalanche Magazine with Liza Béar (also co-founder of BOMB). Sharp ran his eponymous gallery on the Lower East Side from 1988-1991.
Repurposing these dresser-backs reorders the domestic world they originally reflected into one that is visionary and unexpected, with the series traversing a motley mythic landscape built from myth, memory, dream and fantasy. An early work, Dream Hill (1989) depicts a young woman slumbering peacefully under silver-lined clouds; beside her, indigenous masks lay scattered in the tall grass. In Babes in the Wood (1994) two naked vintage dolls are positioned so as to be making their way down a long, forested road, eyes cast back as though they were being followed. The Path (1991) shows us a young girl protectively holding a toddler and crouching beside a rock as night deepens the verdant greens of the lush English garden in which they hide. The exotic abundance of Still Life with Japanese Screen (1996) and Flower Arrangement (1998) exude a slight shift in tone, but underscore the subject of this series as something other than every-day. These understated landscapes and grand bouquets quietly limn our world, heightening the pastiche of Oberst’s reflected realities.
A later piece, Where Parting Is No More (1997), bears a wreath of yellow, red and white tulips resting on a jetblack background. The work’s titular phrase spirals inward at the center of this void. This poetic verse is used throughout literature to suggest that, after death, loved ones will be found again in an eternal place, a place “where parting is no more.” Oberst made this work around the time of her mother’s death; of it she says, “I am partly who I am because of her. She continues on through me, and in a way, there is no parting now, there’s continuing.”
Carolyn Oberst studied drawing under Marshall Glasier at the Art Students League in the late 1970s. Since then her work has been included in solo and two person exhibitions at Willoughby Sharp Gallery, New York; Zeus-Trabia Gallery, New York; Mary Delahoyd Gallery, New York; Margaret Bodell Gallery, New York; M55Art, New York; and, Vit Gallery, Seoul, South Korea. Other solo features include the inaugural Oarbt.com online exhibition curated by Hannah Traore; and, the Atrium Lobby Exhibition organized by Chashama, New York. Group exhibitions include those at Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York; KS Art/Kerry Schuss Gallery, New York; A.I.R. Gallery, New York; Ceres Gallery, New York; Denise Bibro Gallery, New York; Box Factory Gallery, Queens, NY; Taos Gallery, Taos, NM; Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY; The Brattleboro Art Museum, Brattleboro, VT; and, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL. Oberst’s work has further been selected by curators Lois Bender, Sara Nightingale, Yvonne Lamar-Rogers, Holly Gordon, Lori Horowitz, Bridgette Mayer, Asha Ganpat, Bibiana Huang, Maggie Peyton, Richard Timperio, Harriet Korman, Janusz Jaworski, Todd Bartel, and Paul Bridgewater, among others, for exhibition. Notable writers who have engaged her work include Lyle Rexer and Anthony Huffman. She was a resident at Obracadobra Artists Residency at the Casa Colonial, Oaxaca, Mexico, and examples of her work can be found in several private and corporate collections. Oberst is based in New York, NY.
