Curated by Mallory A. Ruymann | Los Angeles
Cicely Carew & Sneha Shrestha, a.k.a IMAGINE
1923 S. Santa Fe Avenue, Los Angeles, CA
Opening Reception: November 2, 6:00 - 8:00 PM PST
November 2 – December 21, 2024
An artist’s studio functions as a container for creative endeavors. Artistic gestures are repeated in private until—eventually and hopefully—the artwork is shown to the public. The artwork is generated and tested in the studio and then staged and displayed in an exhibition space.
This exhibition proposes the gallery as an extension of the studio practices of Cicely Carew and Sneha Shrestha, a.k.a. IMAGINE. A vital element of each artist’s practice involves repeating actions that are simultaneously process and product. Emerging from a period of focused production, the artists will complete the exhibited artworks with and within Abigail Ogilvy Gallery. As the artists flex and bend to respond to the particular conditions of this site, the rehearsal of their work becomes tied to its final performance.
Cicely Carew grounds her practice in abstract painting—its history and potentialities. She approaches her work through improvisation, beginning any artwork with a material, an idea, a disposition, and/or a reference she then iterates from. Estranged from any initial context and reoriented towards two- or three-dimensional painting, the concepts embedded in the work manifest in unpredicted ways as they ingeminate, building out from, on top of, and around each other. Ultimately an anarchic strategy, Carew’s making sets into motion indeterminate yet affirmative outcomes that are a faithful record of all stages of an artwork: idea, research, play, and result.
Sneha Shrestha, a.k.a, IMAGINE, uses a unique lexicon grounded in Devanagari, the script of the Nepali language, in public, large-scale murals and on canvas within the studio. Born and raised in Nepal and now based in the United States, IMAGINE’s artwork stylistically excavates this specific alphabet within the artist’s larger project of both celebrating and deeply considering her country, home, family, and culture. IMAGINE works in between, toggling between articulating lettering as an aesthetic metaphor as well as an actual system of communication. How IMAGINE’s brush records movement demands precision; even the slightest change in her breathing pattern can profoundly affect the dynamism of her line work. Each final stroke encapsulates its practice, divulging the complete conditions of its making.
Together, these artists embrace the repetition of rehearsal and its all-consuming perspective into hazard and happenstance. Rehearsal presents these artists together for the first time.
Curatorial Statement written by Mallory A. Ruymann
About the Artists
Cicely Carew (b. 1982, Los Angeles, CA) is a Boston-based artist, educator, and mind-body facilitator whose multimedia works blur the boundaries between disciplines. Working from a place of improvisation and spiritual embodiment, Carew’s unique language of abstraction signals the transformative power of joy and freedom. Her artistic practice spans immersive installations, collages, sculptural assemblages, painting, and video/sound meditations. This diverse studio output is united by a characteristic vibrancy of color and exuberant gesture extending into the multi-dimensional, inviting viewers to ease into a realm of healing and play. Through an accumulation of layered compositions and materiality, Carew fashions tactile celebrations of the unknown and offers an understanding of the world that transcends the immediately perceptible. In her whimsical and lush ecosystems abounding with infinite possibilities and interpretations, she conveys a mode of re-centering that incites a conscious alignment between heart and mind.
Carew’s public art commissions function on various scales, frequently occupying and energizing space as rooted in her commitment to collective care. Through these spatial interventions, she creates new ways of sensing and being, highlighting the wonder and beauty of human connection. In 2021, Carew completed Ambrosia, a site-specific commission for Boston Properties and Now+There at the Prudential Center. This 5,000 sq. ft. installation took the shape of three-dimensional paintings, inviting viewers to engage with art by walking around and under the suspended mixed-media hybrids, peering through their cascading, ethereal layers. That same year, Peloton commissioned her to create chromatic installations that activated their Chelsea and Madison Avenue storefronts in New York City. In July 2023, she unveiled her public art commission Wishing Well, as part of the Jewish Arts Collaborative’s “Be the Change” initiative, an interactive pyramid meditation space addressing the healing of mental health and ancestral trauma in BIPOC communities. Most recently, her work at the ICA Boston, as part of the 2023 Foster Prize, offered viewers a dynamic engagement with the physical space around them, “amplifying the themes of joy and liberation central to her practice,” as noted by Murray Whyte in The Boston Globe. Carew's installations are an extension of her movement-based healing praxis, inviting viewers to engage with the work beyond the often cursory experience of looking.
Carew completed her MFA at Lesley Art + Design in Cambridge, MA, and her BFA at Massachusetts College of Art + Design, Boston, MA. She has served as an Artist-in-Residence at Shady Hill School, Belmont, MA; taught mixed media and printmaking for the New Art Center, Newton, MA, and Maud Morgan Arts in Cambridge, MA; and screenprinting at Lesley University, Cambridge, MA.
Solo exhibitions include the Fuller Craft Museum (forthcoming 2025); ICA Boston (2023); Fitchburg Art Museum (2022); The Commons Provincetown (2021); Simmons University (2020); and Northeastern University (2017). Her work can be found in the permanent collections of Fitchburg Art Museum; the U.S Consulate in Chiang Mai, Thailand; the U.S Department of State’s Office of Art in Embassies (AIE); Google; Fidelity Investments; Simmons University’s Ifill Archive; Northeastern University’s Archive; the Cambridge Arts Council; and the Federal Reserve of Boston. Carew’s honors include the ICA Boston’s James and Audrey Foster Prize (2023); Brother Thomas Fellowship (2023); BNY Mellon Blanche E. Colman Award (2022); Cambridge Art Council’s Art for Social Justice Grant (2021); The Stay Home Gallery Residency (2021); and the St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award (2021).
She currently resides with her son in Cambridge, MA.
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Sneha Shrestha (b. 1987, Kathmandu, Nepal) is a Nepal-born, Boston and Kathmandu-based artist known for her paintings and larger-than-life murals that harmoniously blend her native Nepali and Sanskrit language, mantras, sacred sounds used in meditation and prayer, and American graffiti hand styles. Her mural works grace multi-story public walls across the United States and around the globe, from Rotterdam to Cambodia.
After college, Shrestha adopted the handle “Imagine,” her mother’s name translated into English, and began experimenting with writing the Nepali language inspired by graffiti handstyles. Nepali is written in Devanagari script, which is commonly, although erroneously, viewed as lacking aesthetic beauty. Shrestha challenges this perception by emphasizing Devanagari’s calligraphic quality through large, bold letters with sweeping lines and accentuated curves. Her work aims to celebrate and inspire an appreciation for the beauty of Nepali language and culture. Education has always been at the forefront of Shrestha’s work; her passion extends to founding the Children’s Art Museum in Kathmandu in 2013 and receiving her master’s from Harvard University in 2017.
Among many public art projects, she is the artist behind the landmark mural on a building owned by MIT at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Main Street in Cambridge, MA. Her artwork can also be found in the collections of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, the Worcester Art Museum, Google, Facebook, and Fidelity. Notably, her work is also part of the permanent collection at MFA Boston, where she is the first contemporary Nepali artist to be collected by the institution. Recent exhibitions include the solo show Ritual and Devotion, Cantor Arts Gallery, College of the Holy Cross (2024), and participation in the group exhibitions Deities of Nepal II, Nepal Arts Council (2024) and Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now, The Rubin Museum (2024), traveling in later 2024 to Wrightwood659 in Chicago. In 2025, she will complete a public art project in partnership with The Rubin Museum for New York City’s Department of Transportation Temporary Art Program.
She was recently selected for a Studio Residency at the Boston Center for the Arts. Her additional honors include a grant from Collective Futures Fund (2024); inclusion in WBUR The ARTery’s 25 Millennials of Color (2019); recognition as one of the 100 most influential women in Nepal by the Nepal Cultural Council (2018); a Boston Artist-in-Residence Award (2018); the HUBWeek Change Maker Award (2018); South Asia and the Arts Fund Grant, Harvard University (2017); and Project Zero Artist-in-Residence Award, Harvard University (2017).
About the Curator
Mallory Ruymann is a curator, art advisor, and art historian who works with emerging artists in all media. She is the Managing Partner of art_works, an art advisory firm that partners with individuals and companies to build significant collections of contemporary art through a mission-driven lens. Her writing can be found in academic journals and local publications, including Boston Art Review and Sculpture (forthcoming). Recently, she has independently curated projects for Boston University Art Galleries, Praise Shadows Art Gallery, and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, among others.
About Abigail Ogilvy Gallery
Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in Los Angeles. We exhibit contemporary art with a heavy emphasis on concept-driven artwork by emerging to mid-career artists located across the country and internationally. Owner Abigail Ogilvy Ryan founded the gallery in Boston in 2015, where the program ran for nine years. In fall 2023, the gallery expanded to Los Angeles under Director Kaylee Hennessey.
Abigail Ogilvy Gallery LA provides a platform for new perspectives and education through independent curation and artist partnerships. The collaborative approach upends the traditional gallery model and aims to enhance the careers of artists, curators, collectors, and other art world professionals, both emerging and established. The gallery program features guest curators in order to share diverse perspectives and voices with the Los Angeles area, while also showing solo and group exhibitions from the gallery roster.
Website: https://www.abigailogilvy.com
Location: 1923 S. Santa Fe Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90021
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday: 11 a.m.–6 p.m. and by appointment
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