“Meat Market”
Artist: Christina Massey
May 28th, 2024 – July 10th, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, May 28th, 6-9PM
Taller Boricua/ The Puerto Rican Workshop is proud to announce the solo exhibition of “Meat Market” by the artist Christina Massey. Massey’s installation is set alongside three other solo exhibitions: “The Cost of Forgetting” by Michael Britto, “Tracing Memories” by Jessica Lagunas, and “Live Wires” by J. Carpenter curated by Marcos Dimas and Christine. Licata. This is the third and last in our series of multiple, solo exhibitions by artists who share facets of our mission: art and aesthetics, community, art activism as well as music and performance.
In Massey’s installation “Meat Market,” Christina Massey deconstructs and repurposes previous series of her own paintings, literally “butchering” them by cutting and tearing them apart and then rebuilding the pieces into three-dimensional flesh-like forms. Resembling animal carcasses and hung from chains and meat hooks, her pieces reflect the objectification and commoditization of art by both the viewer and the art market wherein commercial value competes with aesthetic experience. Her work also references these effects on artists’ work and their own desire and potential to be “marketable,” where the gallery world can at times project the superficial value judgments of singles bars, also referred to as “meat markets” in popular culture. Massey further explores the concepts of both ownership and authorship as her past works are the medium for future ones, rejecting a linear progression and classification of the traditional definition of a body of work as well as the finality of the finished object of art. “Meat Market” is in constant flux, suspended between painting and sculpture, abstraction and representation as well as the literal and conceptual.
Taller Boricua Galleries 1680 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10029 / t: 212.831.4333
About the Artist:
Christina Massey was born and raised in Northern California where she studied painting, printmaking and theater set design. Her work has shown in multiple venues in the New York metropolitan area such as Chashama, Nurture Art, The MoCADA and The Micro Museum as well as in galleries in across the country and abroad. She has multiple publications coming out this year, including work in the New Art Review, Abstractions 2024, an on-air interview with BTR Radio as a part of their “Art Uncovered” program, and has been featured on the popular blog, ArtInBrooklyn.com. Massey’s work can be found in multiple private collections, and publicly at the Janet Turner Museum of Art in California. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Artists website: http://cmasseyart.wordpress.com/