Julie Schenkelberg at the Quarter

Abattoir is pleased to announce an exhibition of sculptures by Julie Schenkelberg at Abattoir @ The Quarter. The exhibition focuses on the three-dimensional work, Parlor Trix, and includes newer wall sculptures based on this seminal piece. Schenkelberg hails from Cleveland; her mixed-media installations are responsive to the post-industrial landscape of her youth. In her practice, she pulls found materials from the domestic sphere--furniture, dishware, textiles, and marble. Often these material signifiers are combined with concrete, resin, and construction materials to reframe the viewer’s notions of domesticity and engage with the region’s RustBelt's legacy of neglect and decay. Just as Cleveland and the region have embraced a more optimistic outlook, so Schenkelberg brings a poetic, even lighthearted tone to her subject. She views the notion of home as a playground for formal and conceptual subversions. Familiar furnishings rekindle premonitions of collapse, but also the unexpected juxtapositions of fragile materials such as cloth and porcelain, with industrial products including discarded metal and concrete. She brings past experience in scenic theater design to her artistic practice, embracing theatricality in her sculptural installations.