Made of day to day ephemera such as discarded Christmas trees and plastic bags, the lighter than air new wall sculptures of Ilene Sunshine are playful drawings in sticks and string. Her new work continues her ongoing exploration into recycled materials transformed, in the tradition of Richard Tuttle and Sarah Sze. Much of the pleasure of these pieces is derived from the keen trick they play of metamorphosing the seemingly inconsequential bits of trash and natural materials into oblique and abstract references to toy like animals, insects, boats and airplanes. Sunshine twists and curves branches into eccentric
shapes, attaching colored plastic and string and then paints stripes or layered colors or dips parts of them into colorful wax all to whimsical effect. The negative space created by the curved branches and string and their shadows are a consequential part of the work. Ilene Sunshine has written of her work that; "Beyond being an urban dweller’s skewed conversation with nature, using such detritus gives me a scavenger’s pleasure of making something out of ‘nothing’. In formal terms ‘negative’ space is a primary concern - not the tree limb or the leaf, but the air that is carved into shapes by them. My sculptures and drawings are, in essence, compositions of palpable voids."

Her new works on paper made from painted pressed leaves conversely feel more like sculpture than drawings. They are made up of small flashe painted leaves literally laid and glued like building bricks on the paper to form small enclosures. There are references here to David Smith, Jackie Windsor, and Andy Goldsworthy and homages to Minimalism. In Sunshine’s works with their chosen material of delicate leaves and modest scale, there is the perverse pleasure of anti matter. This new group of works on paper as a whole, functions as a humorous 21st century send up of Modernism’s Greatest Hits in sculpture.

-Rene Lynch

Ilene Sunshine lives and works in New York City. As well as exhibiting in group shows at metaphor, she has had solo and group exhibitions in other cities besides NYC including; Tokyo, Atlanta and Boston where she received her BFA from Boston University’s School of Fine Arts. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Boston Phoenix, The Hokkai Times, and elsewhere. Ilene Sunshine has received awards from The MacDowell Colony, The Ucross Foundation, A.I.M. Program of the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and The Artists Foundation; Sculpture Grant, Boston among others. Sunshine's work is represented in the public collections of Fidelity Investments, Boston and MFI Offices, Atlanta.