Denise Treizman’s sculptures have so many interesting components tying them together. With every new angle, new details emerge.
The museum’s information on the artist and her work-
The raw materials of Denise Treizman’s work come from the waste stream of contemporary society. She accumulates these materials in a variety of ways to upcycle them into vibrantly colored sculptures that hang on the wall, sit on the floor, or fill rooms with immersive installations. Her practice evolved during her MFA studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Initially an abstract painter, she was captivated by the extraordinary things she found discarded on New York’s streets. Shifting her focus from painting to sculpture, she started to make art that incorporated and responded to those objects and materials. She continued her career in New York for nine years followed by two in Haifa, Israel, before arriving in Miami, where she currently lives and works.
Another formative experience occurred while she was at ACRE, an artists’ residency in Steuben, WI. There she was introduced to weaving by a fellow resident artist. Concerned that she did not have the patience to learn the practice or work in a way that did not yield immediate results. she was at first reluctant to take it up. After some reflection. she decided to try weaving with nontraditional materials. Starting with duct tape and bubble wrap, she was excited by the outcome. Teaching herself the techniques and working intuitively, she now has several looms in her studio, each with weavings in progress. These often become points of departure for new works, but they are not made with their eventual ends in mind. Rather, she treats them just as she does other materials, as visual elements that must contribute to her vision for the work.
Treizman notes that she does not make her sculptures with found objects but instead from objects and materials she accumulates. She banks things that have a resonance and relevance to the nature of her work, not knowing when or how they might ultimately be used. A list of some of the objects in her recent sculptures may suggest rather arbitrary choices, including pool noodles, tennis shoes, exercise balls, hula hoops, pompoms, and a dumbbell. A look at the work, though, belies that idea. These things are accents, punctuations, dissonant notes within a larger cohesive aesthetic dominated by a swirl of optically seductive materials. Shiny plastics, synthetic fabrics, colored duct tapes, iridescent papers, neon spray paints, and sparkling LED lights provide the overall visual language that pulls her works together. With a playful and sophisticated eye, Treizman assembles sculptures that are explosively energetic, teetering on chaos but resolving into beautifully expressive statements.