Amy Yoes Projects

Wood and Plexiglass posable sculptures created for the 2019 one-person exhibition Correspondências, at Museu Internacional de Escultura Contemporânea, Santo Tirso, Portugal

Canvas and muslin paintings created for the 2019 one-person exhibition Correspondências, at Museu Internacional de Escultura Contemporânea, Santo Tirso, Portugal

Fire Projects stage the compressed life cycle of a sculpture, from its creation to its destruction. Starting in 2012, Amy Yoes has regularly created large structures using discarded materials found on New York City sidewalks. The projects are related to her installation and painting work, but specifically built to be burnt in a choreographed blaze. Ignited before an informal audience gathering, the sculpture unfolds itself before the viewers, as layers of variable combustibility burn away. The final outcome of each fire consists of a series of black and white photographs, as well as charcoal fragments that can be used for drawing.

Earlier iterations of Fire Project have taken place during residencies at Mildred’s Lane, Beach Lake, PA. (Special thanks are due to J. Morgan Puett and to Mark Dion, for regularly hosting the project.) Several sculptures were devised by Yoes in direct collaboration with fellow artist Paul Bartow, and they have been assembled at different times with the help of Charles Ehrenfried, Aiden Gann, James Gann, Mariana Gutiérrez, Patrick Gallagher, Ellen Giddings, Isobel Rose Lister, John Lust, Ana Slade, Santi Slade, Jaquel Theis, César Valdes, Aron Williams, and Hudson Williams-Enyon, as well as multiple Mildred’s Lane fellows. 

A new Fire Project event has been scheduled by curator Denise Markonish for the summer of 2020 on the grounds of Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA. This will be the first time the project happens within a built, industrial environment, as opposed to previous countryside settings.

Amy Yoes: Drawing Room. Installation with wooden stencils and audience participation. University of Akron, Ohio, 2015. Reclaimed  wooden remainders of lasercutting process were painted and refashioned as stencils, which were made available for the exhibition visitors to create their own drawings at a side gallery.

Mobile Animation Unit (for Hélio Oiticica). Wood structure, camera, lights. 11' x 8' x 5', A project for "Hélio Labs," an exhibition curated by Trevor Martin for the Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, August 30 - December 17, 2016.

See final video here.

The project revolved around a multilevel sculptural device equipped with lighting and rigging for a digital camera and its onscreen controls. The unit was located at the SAIC Sullivan Galleries, in Chicago, for the duration of the Hélio Labs workshops, and teams of students and volunteers regularly collaborated with the artist choreographing and moving abstract shapes in tiny increments, each step being shot and then assembled as a stop motion animation movie. Animation components included cardbord, plexiglass, acetate, paper, wood shapes, as well as articulated sculptures built by Amy Yoes to supply machine like motions.

Special thanks to Paul Bartow (fabricator); Meredith Leich (animation consultant); Vidisha Aggarwal, Johanna Nicole Becerra, Sofia Diaz, Lorena Carmina Barrera Enciso, Jooyoung Lee, Talia Newman, Emily Okin, Jayleen Marie Perez, Xiyue Sun (animators); Sarah Ann Banks, Hernan Gomez Chavez, Fan Ge, Clara Kim, Dannyboy Aaron Shapiro (woodshop helpers); Rong Zhang (costume sewing); and Mary Jane Jacob, Trevor Martin, Hannah Barco, at the Sullivan Galleries. This video was made possible by the Film/Video Studio at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; special thanks to sound editor Paul Hill.

Amy Yoes: Sightlines. Stop-motion animation video, 3:11, 2015. Special thanks to Bobby Bedford, Natalie González, and Adam Koziol.

To see Sightlines on Vimeo, click here.

Amy Yoes: The Structurals. Mixed media collages, 2014. Synthesizing unhinged fragments, print marginalia, and assorted residua from stamping processes, they explore style as subject. The works stretch across uninterrupted sequences that refer to cinematic possibilities. 

The Structurals 001 - 008: 18” x 24”
The Structurals 009 - 042: 8” x 10”
The Structurals 043 - 055: 14” x 16”

The entire series of 55 mixed media collages, plus 4 mixed media 2014 sculptures, various sizes, was originally shown at The Structurals, an exhibition at the Michael and Noémi Neidorff Art Gallery, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, February 5 - March 28, 2015. Special thanks to Elizabeth Ward, Robert Ziebell, Jon Lee. The collages were subsequently shown as Structurals and Sightlines, an exhibition at Devening Projects + Editions, Chicago, November 1 - December 12, 2015, accompanied by Sightlines, a stop-motion animation featuring sculptures and visual echoes from the collages.

"Citizens Transactions" (mixed media on printed matter, 2017.) A series of 125 paintings using cancelled checks from the 1950s found at an Indiana thrift shop.

Amy Yoes: Encoder. Wood, paint, animated projections. 13' x 9' x 9’. Part of “Ultraviolet," an exhibition curated by Scott Proctor at Mass Gallery, Austin, Texas, from March 27 to May 2, 2015. 

Special thanks to Scott Proctor, Dyna Poch, George Pasterk, Stan and Martha Pipkin, Jules Buck Jones, Richard P. Mansfield, Andy Rihn, and all the team at Mass Gallery.

To see Encoder on Vimeo, click here.

A collection of painted wood, articulated sculptures, devised to be shot for the stop-motion animations of the Mobile Animation Unit project.

Amy Yoes: Raft. Stop-motion animation, 2012. Digital video loop, 2:08.

A sculptural installation at Mildred's Lane, Pennsylvania, projected colored shapes that were shot on a timer and assembled as a stop-motion animation. 

Special thanks to Heather Donahue and to J. Morgan Puett. Raft was originally shown as a part of Mildred's Lane participation in "MoMA Studio: Common Senses," from September 24 to November 19, 2012, at MoMA's Education and Research Building, New York.
 

Amy Yoes: Light Lab. Sculptural installation (24' x 18' x 13') and seventeen silver gelatin black and white photographs. CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles, September 11 - October 22, 2011. 

Special thanks to James Harmon, Paul Bartow, Kristin Cammermeyer, David Komary, Sabine Gueldenfusz, AIR Krems, Foto Leutner, Lee Corbin, Matthew Scarlett, Daniel Aksten, MG Yoes, Jr.

Amy Yoes: Modification and Collapse. Stop-motion animation, 2009.
Digital video loop, 1:42. Special thanks to Kristin Cammermeyer and Taylor Franklin. 

This piece was initially shown in Structured Simplicity, a group show curated by Felicity Hogan, including Mai Braun, Hilary Harnischfeger, Elana Herzog, and Fabienne Lasserre, from June 21 to August 9, 2009 at Dumbo Art Center, Brooklyn, NY.

To see it Modification and Collapse on Vimeo, click here.

Amy Yoes: Re-Make/Re-Model. Site-specific installation at Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge, MA, 2015. Wood, paint, projections. 12' x 22' x 15'. A part of “The Way We Live Now, Modernist Ideologies at Work,” an exhibition curated by James Voorhies, February 5 - March 5, 2015. Special thanks to fellow artist and fabricator Paul Bartow.

To see Re-Make/Re-Model on Vimeo, click here.
 

Further Considerations, a collaboration between Amy Yoes and Jeffrey Jenkins, The Mildred Complexity, Narrowsburg, NY, 2015. Wood, plastic, photographic prints of various sizes, framed.

Photographer Jeffrey Jenkins photographed sculptural assemblages created and painted by Amy Yoes with raw, discarded materials he had acquired at thrift shops after having shot them in their original place. The result photographs were returned to the stores and rephotographed in their decontextualized state.

Amy Yoes: Reflector. Wood, mirrors, lenses. Site-specific installation at Victoria Mansion, Portland, Maine, 2014. Part of the exhibition “Mansion as Muse,” curated by Arlene Schwind. Special thanks to Brian Gallagher and Aron Williams.
 

Amy Yoes: Light Lab. Silver gelatin prints, 2011. Image size: 4" x 5.33"; frame size 13.75" x 14.875" Edition of 3. Seventeen black and white photographs presented as a part of the sculptural installation Light Lab, CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles, California, September 11 - October 22, 2011. 

 

Amy Yoes: Kitchen Project, West 67th Street. Permanent multi-media installation and functional kitchen in a private residence, New York, 2008. A collaborative project by Amy Yoes, Slade Architecture, and Bronze Hill Inc. 

LED lights are programmed to cycle through the color spectrum at various speeds. Stop-motion animations are projected from within the cabinetry. Cabinet doors and drawers trigger amplified sounds when opened, transforming the kitchen into a sound environment. All surfaces are hand-painted. 

Special thanks to Ann Baderian, Paul Bartow, Marni Gellman, George Gilby, James Harmon, Beth Hull, Suzy Kunz, Abby Lutz, Mihai Mocean, Lawrence Mullane, Julia Murray, Cezar Neculcea, Nathan Pickett, Ann Schiffers, James and Hayes Slade, Michael Steinberg Fine Art, Shane Canyon Walsh, Stephanie Wong; plus everyone at Slade Architecture, Bronze Hill, Sound & Vision Advanced Technologies Inc., Neil Power Painting.

Amy Yoes: Modifier. C-prints, 20"x30", 2010. Edition of three + one AP