Cornelia Parker
January 9 – February 13, 2010
Opening reception: Saturday January 9th, 6-8PM

D’Amelio Terras is pleased to present a series of new wire drawings by gallery artist Cornelia Parker. The artist is well known for her large-scale installations of transformed or destabilized objects that re-emerge in surprisingly beautiful forms. For years, Parker has been concerned with formalizing things beyond our control, containing the volatile and making it into something quiet and contemplative.

Here, Parker has melted lead bullets and literally drawn them to the limits of their materiality. Creating wire grids, Parker mimics the act of drawing a line. Akin to the Minimalist vision of reducing geometry and abstraction to the barest essentials, Parker’s grids transcend the production of bullets as ammunition. Their trajectories have been arrested and trapped between two panes of glass, nullifying the bullets’ potential for violence and damage. Each drawing uses a length of wire that has the same quantity of lead contained in a .44 Magnum bullet. It maps a unique grid that floats in three-dimensional space, casting a spectral shadow on the frame. Parker’s wire drawings look and feel sparse yet active, restrictive yet empty, in the process of being built or perhaps falling apart.

Cornelia Parker has had major solo shows at the Serpentine Gallery, London (1998), ICA Boston (2000), the Galeria Civica de Arte Moderne in Turin (2001), the Kunsteverein in Stuttgart (2004), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2005) the Modern Museum at Fort Worth, Texas (2006) and Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima Peru (2008). Her work is in private collections worldwide, besides many public collections, including MOMA (New York), the Tate Gallery, the British Council, Henry Moore Foundation, De Young Museum (San Francisco) and the Yale Center for British Art. She was a Turner Prize nominee in 1997 and was featured in the 8th International Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates in 2007. Parker lives and works in London.