Raw/Cooked Series Continues at the Brooklyn Museum

An exhibition featuring three related painting and sculpture installations created by Brooklyn artist Caitlin Cherry for the Brooklyn Museum is the latest in the continuing Raw/Cooked series of work by under-the-radar Brooklyn artists, presented with support from Bloomberg. The exhibition, Hero Safe, will be on view June 7 through September 1, 2013.

Cherry lives and works in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn. Her large-scale figure paintings often incorporate sculpture and readymade objects. Cherry's subjects draw freely from historical and contemporary sources, blending humor with social and political critique. Her canvases feature caricatured forms, some human, some dreamlike and surreal, with everyday objects and decorative motifs.

For her Raw/Cooked exhibition, Cherry has designed original objects that combine the look and themes of art and weaponry. Situated within the Museum's iconic architectural spaces, Cherry's non-functional "weapons" of art explore the role of museums to protect and preserve precious objects. Inspired by the military inventions of Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, each of Cherry's installations is a contemporary reimagining of one of Leonardo's military machines, including a catapult, a giant crossbow, and a trebuchet (a medieval siege engine). Designed to both protect and destroy art, Cherry's works are constructed from wood and appear to be fully operational. The two positioned in the Contemporary Gallery's arched overlooks aim into the Beaux-Arts Court below; one is loaded and appears ready to launch a painting at the grand chandelier; the other creates the illusion of having just launched a painting, suspended above it.

The artists in the second season of Raw/Cooked were recommended by an advisory panel of leading Brooklyn artists that includes Michael Joo, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Amy Sillman, and Mickalene Thomas, who each proposed three artists for consideration. Caitlin Cherry was recommended by Michael Joo. The final selections were made by Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. The Museum offers each of the participating artists a variety of unconventional spaces in which they may make art interventions.

Born in Chicago, Caitlin Cherry received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Columbia University's School of the Arts. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Kravets Welby Gallery, New York, and the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University.

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