On Saturday, April 11, 2015 The Moviehouse Studio Gallery in Millerton, NY will open its new spring/summer exhibition featuring the sculpture of Connecticut artist Henry Klimowicz. The show has been curated by The Moviehouse’s Carol Sadlon, working in conjunction with the artist.

An opening reception for the show is scheduled for Saturday, April 11 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The reception is free and open to all who wish to attend. The exhibition will run through July 9, 2015.

A resident of Kent, CT and graduate of the Skowhegan School of Art, Klimowicz earned his Bachelors in Fine Art from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and his MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He has been a colonist at Millay, Yaddo, McDowell, Ucross Foundation, and The Vermont Studio Center.

In 1986, living in Brooklyn, NY in a limited space that provided him very little room for tools and traditional materials, Klimowicz was forced to think creatively about ways he could continue to sculpt given these physical constraints. It was then he decided to work in corrugated cardboard, a readily available medium that worked perfectly for his situation.

Klimowicz feels that, “…as a medium, cardboard comes with no value and therefore can become whatever I decide to make it.” He considers the creation of his pieces a little akin to “…long term drawings...that work out over the surface of a piece.” He starts small, often with no clear indication of where a piecewill take him, letting it work itself out, without consciously thinking where a piece is going or if it’s going well. The medium is the driver, with Klimowicz making aesthetic decisions along the way.

Klimowicz’s early work clearly reflects a strong relationship with nature, and these naturalistic themes continue to be very apparent in his non-representational work which began to emerge in 2007. Often resembling organic creations, the artist constructs the works piece by piece, rather like a bee building a hive.

The results, that vary in scale from small and intimate to extremely large installations, are fascinating, three-dimensional pieces of work that attract the viewer with their beauty and intricacy. Paradoxically, as wonderfully unique each piece is, Klimowicz has observed that cardboard is such a commonplace material that viewers are very clearly familiar with it and can relate to it, which, in turn, affects how they enter the work.

For the past three years, Klimowicz has run The Re Institute, a 2000 square foot exhibition space situated in the hay loft of a 1960's barn on a forty acre working farm, located at the intersection of New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, at 1395 Boston Corners Rd, Millerton. The Re Institute hosts an annual series of small group shows, seasonally from May through October, and brings together visual artists, filmmakers, writers, composers, dancers, and outdoor installation artists. The goal of the Re Institute is to allow artists to observe their work in a new context, and to promote and enrich new perspectives, understandings, and insights in the arts within this unique and historical rural landscape.

Artist’s Statement

“Cardboard is simple and straightforward. It is also a severely limited material. It has an ever-present cultural bias related to its past uses as a container or its present use as waste. I love it when the material transcends its cultural confines. If I can make something beautiful from cardboard, I have then said that anything can be made valuable, fruitful, or hopeful. I see this work as very positive because of the lengths that have been traveled by the material from trash to beauty. It is a statement about the possible—that all things can be redeemed, often for more than what was deposited. Creativity can be that redeemer.” - Henry Klimowicz