Hilary Berseth

HILARY BERSETH April 24 – May 22, 2010 | 11 Rivington St, NY

Eleven Rivington is pleased to present the solo gallery debut of Hilary Berseth, on view from April 24 - May 22, 2010.  The exhibition will feature new copper sculptures and paintings.  Berseth’s work has been featured in past group shows at Leo Koenig, Mary Boone, and Guild & Greyshkull.

Featured in the exhibition will be two series of works that explore the formal possibilities of growth by marrying process with programs or systems.  The four copper sculptures are grown over weeks in tanks filled with a bath of soluble copper using an electroplating process. Starting as squares or circles of copper, the sculptures develop coral-like fronds and formations as their electromagnetic field interacts with the random movement of copper ions in the bath. The three paintings, collectively titled the Automata series, similarly build over time, using programs familiar to computer science. The paintings are structured like game-boards, the programs they chart determine the placement of dots of paint. Built in layered passes, each layer is calculated from the input of the previous layer. The final paintings are the residue left by playing each game (executing the program) for a number of turns (states.)  In both series, complex forms verging on the organic emerge from simple parameters and basic materials. In doing so, these works consider the possibilities for abstraction in relation to the processes of nature.

The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. (T. H. Huxley)

Hilary Berseth was born 1979, educated at Columbia University, NY and lives and works in Bucks County, PA.  Eleven Rivington presented his work in a 2-person exhibition with Kevin Zucker in 2008.  Reviews and articles on his work have appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, and the Village Voice, among others.