Fredric Snitzer Gallery is proud to present Balancing Act, unveiling renowned artist María Elena González’ latest and final iteration of her Repairs series. Another element considered within this exhibition is the inclusion of shelving used within the González' studio. This system of shelves, arranged with different tests and maquettes, becomes a way to reveal the artist's process of working and looking, an often rarely seen aspect of the finalized work. This exhibition marks the conclusion of a powerful body of work that began in the summer of 2020, offering a poignant reflection on resilience, restoration, and healing in a time of utmost uncertainty.
Balancing Act represents the culmination of González's exploration of broken and discarded objects, reassembled using black epoxy. This final work in the Repairs series captures the artist's meditation on how we navigate moments of crisis, finding equilibrium amidst uncertainty and emerging with renewed strength.
Initiated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Repairs began as a response to the disarray left behind in the San Francisco Art Institute's studios, where González worked as the tenured chair for the Sculpture Department before the institute's closure. Amongst a desolate scene of abandoned workspaces, González utilized remnants left behind – scrap wood, ceramic shards, discarded projects – and began to mend and repair them. With simple epoxy binding these disparate elements, the artist's actions upon the objects possess a power of reinvention and stability while, on the surface, the object's fragility is still evident.
Balancing Act also includes a series born from Repairs. The series’ origins began as a means to find other materials the artist could recycle, locating Tepco Beach in San Francisco Bay, which for decades was the former dumping ground for Tepco, a China and porcelain company that made no-frills dinnerware for restaurants and diners across the country. What manifested from combing the beach's ceramic fragments was a series of Frankstein-esque mugs. Detached from their initial functionality, the objects are uncanny in the grotesque arrangement pieced together in various styles, hues, and ornamentation. This results in something wholly unique, serving as a powerful ecological statement on American waste.
In addition to three-dimensional works, the exhibition includes her experimental prints, Tepco/Oakland, where ghostly images of these fragmented objects are produced using a scanner to challenge the viewer's perception. These images yield a mesmerizing vantage point for the objects, as if submerged in water, a nod to the source materials' geographical location.
This final chapter, Balancing Act, is a metaphor for the precariousness of existence and the need to continually adapt and repair. The act of mending is a way of understanding that nothing is ever truly lost—it's about transformation and survival.
About María Elena González
Cuban-born artist María Elena González is an internationally recognized sculptor based in Brooklyn, NY. González interweaves the conceptual with a strong dedication to craft in her complex installations and poetic arrangements, exploring themes like identity, memory, dislocation, loss, and the wonder of nature. She is currently working on climate change mitigation strategies.
A career spanning over thirty years, she has won the Prix de Rome, the Grand Prize at the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts at Ljubljana, Slovenia, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has been awarded grants from numerous foundations, including Pollock-Krasner, Joan Mitchell, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Penny McCall. She has served as the Sculpture Commissioner of the New York City Public Design Commission and has also taught at Cooper Union School of Art, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the San Francisco Art Institute, among others. González’s work was featured at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, FIU, Miami, FL. Her work can be found in numerous public collections, including the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Museum voor Modern Kunst, Arnhem, The Netherlands; Museum of Art, The Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; The Museum of Arts and Design, New York; and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
