Materials for the Arts Presents BOUNDARY LAYER BY MFTA Artist-in-Residence Kate Rusek

Materials for the Arts (MFTA) will present Boundary Layer, a solo exhibition by MFTA Artist-in-Residence Kate Rusek, on view now through August 2, 2024 at the Materials for the Arts Gallery.

Reclaiming what it means to call something trash, Rusek’s creative practice engages intimately with the discarded. From practical materials like hard plastics and nylon, to more unconventional arts media, such as aluminum blinds, mascara wands, and microplastic dust, Rusek’s work transmutes ‘waste’ into maximalist organic structures that interrogate assigned value, material narrative, and the binary between what’s ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural.’ As Materials for the Arts’ Artist-in-Residence, Rusek had unlimited access to the city program’s 35,000-square-foot warehouse, as well as a stipend and free exclusive studio space, since starting her residency in February 2024.

The exhibition’s title, Boundary Layer, references an ecological term for the fluid space that interacts with a surface such as water or moving air which bears optimal conditions for life to thrive. In a similar manner, MFTA’s warehouse, full of discarded materials, creates the optimal conditions for creativity to thrive in infinite expressions. Filled with both geometric and organic shapes, Boundary Layer explores the delicate balance between nature and artifice.

"MFTA’s Artist-in-Residence program consistently brings in artists whose imaginative use of re-purposed materials is an inspiration and revelation, and Kate Rusek's remarkable ‘Boundary Layer' is no exception,” said NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Laurie Cumbo. “I encourage all New Yorkers to check out this exhibition and learn more about MFTA’s work reshaping artistic possibilities through sustainable practices to champion a cleaner, greener, more creative New York City.”

“This work challenges the limits of ordinary perception, akin to looking at a snowflake with a magnifying glass,” said Kate Rusek. All this requires is attention and spending time to look. There is a layer of psychological perception at play in everything I make. I want to elicit a somatic sensory experience of our world through noticing; art holds a tremendous power to unleash our capacities. This same perception is necessary to address the high-tech, low-biodiversity dystopia that’s creeping across the planet now. To both look, and be able to imagine what we should replace it with is the beauty and horror of our age.”

“Kate has been coming to shop at The Warehouse for many years and I had the pleasure to engage with her work more deeply through her installation ‘Imagined Fungal Emergence’ at Socrates Sculpture Park last fall,” said MFTA Executive Director Tara Sansone. “When visiting her personal studio, I was immediately intrigued by her large sculptural pieces. These distinctly delicate and simultaneously colossal works gave us insight as to what a residency at MFTA could look like. Kate has taken the unconventional items that grace our warehouse aisles at times — the items that no one else could use or imagine working with — and created intricate bodies of work that augment their original purpose. Surplus mascara wands, discontinued fire hoses, name-brand makeup pouches: these materials have found new life in Kate’s hands.” 

Influenced by complex organic architectures and eco-social systems, Rusek uses discarded materials to create highly tactile works that invite the viewer to look closer. Rusek’s passion for the sciences has long informed her creative practice. Inspired by organisms present in forest ecosystems, the deep recesses of the ocean, and other forgotten corners of the planet, Rusek brings the wonders of nature to the MFTA gallery for her latest exhibition.

In Boundary Layer, Rusek’s assemblages resemble arthropod-like creatures whose infinitely small, yet complex structures have been enlarged to sumptuous proportions. Large quantities of mascara wands, vinyl blind slats, vintage led crystals, and discarded plastic materials reassemble in repetitive sequences to create undulating, skeletal structures that mimic wildlife biodiversity. Boundary Layer invites its viewers to take an intimate look at our planet’s infinitely breathtaking form — to witness Rusek’s work is to witness the beauty in our world.

Boundary Layer by Kate Rusek will be on view at Materials for the Arts through August 2, 2024. The MFTA Gallery welcomes visitors Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm. Admission to this exhibition is free and open to the public. 

Rusek is just one of three artists whose work will be showcased at MFTA in 2024 as a part of MFTA’s Artist-in-Residence program. For over a decade, this residency has provided artists whose creative practice incorporates reuse with free studio space in MFTA’s 35,000 square-foot warehouse and unlimited access to the troves of donated supplies that have helped fuel NYC's arts community since 1978.  Each MFTA artist residency culminates with a solo exhibition in the MFTA gallery, located at the entrance to The Warehouse. This gallery provides inspiration to thousands of MFTA recipient educators, students artists, nonprofits, and social service organizations picking up supplies, and the general public, encouraging everyone to explore the creative potential of nontraditional arts materials.

About Kate Rusek

Kate Rusek assembles highly tactile sculptures, textile, and installation with an emphasis on craft and materiality. Her multidisciplinary, ecologically minded practice transmutes waste and discarded materials into abundant, biophilic structures that interrogate the value assigned to objects, the stories told through materials, and notions of what is considered natural versus unnatural. Through iteration and repetitious assemblage, she transmutes her materials into shape shifting works of art, which explore the possibilities—and limits—of human perception.

Rusek’s previous residencies include the Archie Bray Foundation, Chulitna Lodge, the Hambidge Center, Vashon Artist Residency, GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, and Vermont Studio Center, among others. You may have seen her otherworldly creations in Long Island City, as Rusek created “Imagined Fungal Emergence” at Socrates Sculpture Park as their 2023 Devra Freelander Fellow.  Rusek is also a 2020 Daytime Emmy winner for her costume and puppet work on Sesame Street and has contributed to numerous film and television productions as a specialty tailor for over fifteen years.

About Materials for the Arts (MFTA)

A program of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, with support from the Department of Education and Friends of Materials for the Arts, MFTA is NYC’s largest reuse center supporting nonprofits with arts programming, public schools, and City agencies. On average MFTA collects about 1.5 million pounds of supplies each year which it provides, free of charge, to its member organizations. In addition to providing materials, MFTA has the MFTA Education Center, Gallery, Artist-in-Residence and Designer-in-Residence programs, and Third Thursday public programming, which are supported by Friends of Materials for the Arts. Learn more at nyc.gov/mfta.