LINDA KAMILLE SCHMIDT
(New York, NY – Chelsea) – Garvey|Simon is pleased to present Linda Kamille Schmidt: Fiber Space opening June 27, 2024 at 547 West 27 Street, New York, NY 10001. The exhibition features a selection of Schmidt’s recent semi-transparent fabric collages, ranging from installation scale, to intimate, window-sized works. Schmidt’s collages are a mélange of memory, culling together personal and universal experience, all the while challenging the distinction between craft and fine art. This is Linda Schmidt’s first solo show with Garvey|Simon and her third solo show in Manhattan. Linda Kamille Schmidt: Fiber Space is on view through July 20, 2024. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, June 27 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at 547 West 27 Street, Suite 209, New York, NY 10001. The artist will be present. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
Linda Kamille Schmidt plays with emotional connections and memory in her smaller, framed works. In their encasements, each collage appears as a portal; a well of both excitement and sentimentality. Her transparent and opaque fabrics mingle together with an almost casual ease. Schmidt’s hand is evident in the cut, placement, and suturing of each strip. The artist vacillates between precise machine and loose, wobbly hand-sewn stitches. Her subtle use of pins in the works act as focal points for the eye as it dances around the celebration of color and texture. As a result, her works refuse the sterility of manufacturing, and challenge the reductive elision of perfectionism and femininity. This sense of touch evokes a closeness with the fabric, almost inviting contact. A hot frenzy of geometric forms, Schmidt’s fabric swatches abut and overlap to form a kaleidoscopic play with depth and recession. Coupled with the scale of these smaller pieces, Schmidt draws her viewer forward, and entices them to fall into her mesmerizing displays.
Schmidt’s larger installation work also places her squarely in a tradition of subversive feminist art. At this scale, her collage method is evocative of quilting, a generational passion in her family. Like her predecessors, Schmidt’s use of immensity and hard geometric abstraction works to undermine the association of quaintness with craftwork. Furthermore, it disrupts the notion that femininity is small and subdued. Though her collages are constructed from background to foreground, her installation works can be viewed from any vantage point. With this, Schmidt creates a furtive sense of volume and endows her work with a surprising sculptural quality. Schmidt is indiscriminate in how she sources her fabrics, pulling scraps from the depths of bargain bins and swatches of luxury textiles alike. As such, her works encompass a spectrum of experience, socioeconomic markers, and both public and private life. Schmidt’s larger works are at once intimate objects of comfort and internality, and bombastic displays of celebration and status.
Linda Kamille Schmidt is originally from Kansas where she attended Bethel College and where most of her family still lives. She received an MA and MFA in drawing and painting from the University of Iowa in Iowa City. She has lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY, since 1989. Solo and Group shows have included AIR Gallery (New York, NY), Ann Street Gallery (Newburgh, NY), Art in Embassies (Kohor, Republic of Palau), Art Mora (Ridgefield Park, NJ; Seoul, South Korea; New York, NY), ArtPort Kingston (Kingston, NY), Carroll and Sons Gallery (Boston, MA), Chazou Gallery (British Columbia), Cheryl Hazen Gallery (New York, NY), Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center (New York, NY), Curious Matter (Jersey City, NJ), DeDee Shattuck Gallery (Westport, MA), Denise Bibro Fine Art (New York, NY), Main Window Dumbo (Brooklyn, NY), Port Washington Public Library (Port Washington, NY), Praxis Gallery (New York, NY), Readywipe Gallery (Holyoke, MA), Ridderhof Martin Gallery at the University of Mary Washington (Fredericksburg, VA), Robert W. Regier Art Gallery at Bethel College (N. Newton, KS), Saunders's Farm (Garrison, NY), State of the Arts Gallery (Hong Kong), Tilly Foster Farm Museum (Brewster, NY) and other venues.