Lesley Heller is pleased to present a solo exhibition of recent small-scale multi-media collages by Amanda C. Mathis in the Project Space. Predominantly known for her large-scale site-specific installations which often incorporate discarded elements from DIY renovations, Mathis’ small-scale collages bring these larger conversations on domestic space into a more intimate and personal scale. Her works are explorations on the everyday architecture of dwellings and the overlapping yet disjointed elements of how we recollect and piece together the places we pass on a daily basis.

“I am interested in the ordinary details of our domestic architecture” Mathis states, “and how they can portray feelings about place and time.” These everyday elements take center stage in her work, especially in the form of window and door elements, which act as the connecting features that bind each collaged element together. Like an incomplete memory, Mathis’ collages are made up of fragments pieced together with a logic uniquely their own; forming structures that feel at once familiar and disorienting.

All the images used in the collages were taken by Mathis in either Brooklyn or Queens. They are photographs she has captured while walking through these neighbourhoods on a daily basis; a way of connecting and identifying the reoccurring elements in the buildings. They highlight the everyday architecture of the mundane and how some forms of architecture can be very regional and specific.

In one of the newer pieces, Memory Study 11, 2018, materials previously used only in her installation and assemblage work have directly carried over into the collages. The upholstery and linoleum flooring—taken from one of these buildings—form an interesting conversation with the photographs and imply the abstract nature of the fragmented and sometimes lost memories that that are tied to a place.

Amanda C. Mathis (b. 1980, Orlando, FL) is known for her work encompassing site-specific interventions, assemblage, sculpture, photography and collage. She received her BFA in ceramics from the University of Central Florida (2004) and her MFA in sculpture from Pratt Institute (2006). She has had solo exhibitions at James Nicholson Gallery (NY), Smack Mellon (NY) and Thelma Sadoff Center for the Arts (WI). She has been included in group and two-person exhibitions at Open Source Gallery (NY), Kunsthalle Galapagos (NY), the Freedman Gallery at Albright College (PA), helper (NY) and Gallery Molly Krom (NY). Mathis has participated in the Artist in the Marketplace program at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace program and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts residency. She was a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 2011 and a NYFA Fellowship (Crafts/Sculpture) in 2014. She is currently based in Queens, NY.