Self/Contained
Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center
12 Vassar Street
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601
(845) 486-4571

Opening reception
Sunday, October 4, 2015
1 to 3pm

Riva Weinstein explores culture and self in this solo exhibition at Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center. Using consumer packaging from food products she and her husband frequently eat, the artist created playful balls she photographed in locations ranging from every day to extraordinary. Travelling Orbital Recycled Beauty Spheres show up next to a Noguchi at the Clark, overlooking the Atlantic in Montauk, in shadows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with fish bones at the Salton Sea. Weinstein also created a mask she photographed herself and other artists wearing for a series called Portraits of the Artist as a Bobblehead. Again the locations range from extraordinary to everyday. 18 photographs from each of the two series are exhibited here as quotidian postcards and selected over-sized prints. Accompanying the photographs are oversized panels of packaging materials. Small ORBS are scattered playfully. While the work at its simplest level may suggest innovative ways in which waste may be reimagined as creative material, the artist’s intention goes deeper to question the ways in which our culture views art and garbage, the mounting issues of refuse on land and sea, and how we see ourselves and our surroundings in an increasingly throw away world. Postcards from both series are available for purchase.