Ortega y Gasset Projects
Round Peg, Square Hole:
Natalie Beall & Scott Vander Veen
Curated by Clare Britt and Leeza Meksin
October 26 through December 15, 2024
Opening Reception:
Saturday, October 26th, 6-8 PM
Round Peg, Square Hole brings together the works of two Upstate New York artists: Natalie Beall and Scott Vander Veen, whose works form an exquisite conversation about utility, performance, gender and inventiveness, bringing to mind the philosophical ideas about the value and the queering of “use”, explored by the British-Australian theorist Sara Ahmed.
Natalie Beall creates wall hanging objects which are both paintings and sculptures that investigate functionality, domesticity and fantasy. She also creates paper collages that are precise and symmetrical, incorporating attributes of usefulness such as grids, hooks and holes. Together they reference a world of seemingly utilitarian objects that are unable or unwilling to perform as intended, and instead engage in a delicate and playful masquerade. Through transforming source imagery associated with the domestic while humorously reconfiguring it, Beall embraces a lineage of traditionally feminine and often overlooked artifacts that hold a psychic and emotional charge.
Scott Vander Veen’s multidisciplinary practice utilizes a wide array of materials such as wood, paper, clothing, latex, glue, grommets, plaster, rubber drain plugs, misappropriated text, zippers, and found photographs. For this show, the artist presents a series of screen-like, free-standing forms that eschew the conventional divide between decorative and useful. These materially omnivorous objects challenge our preconceived notions of how a painting or a sculpture might behave, suggesting that multivalence is not merely possible, but essential. Like Beall, Vander Veen is preoccupied with questions of utility in art, exploring how form directs function and how queering that function is an act of resistance and pleasure.
