Swan Song

<p>Anton Kern Gallery presents Stephanie Temma Hier's Swan Song, the artist's first exhibition with the gallery. The show features ten new oil paintings each set within a hand-sculpted ceramic frame, three ceramic and resin-encased drawings, and a surreal tableau of maquettes and preparatory sketches. Evoking household objects like chairs and placesettings, shoes and coats, the works form a whimsical and otherworldly feeling of home on the gallery's third floor. In its mischievous and often uncanny sense of play, Swan Song challenges our assumptions about the boundaries between subject and object, between form and function, and between two and three dimensional states of being. Paintings press outward, refusing to remain flat as their ceramic settings create unexpected depth. The artist's drawings appear held in place by their clear resin frames, as if to keep them from coming to life. Small sculptures and preparatory fragments cluster together on a wooden table carved with watchful eyes, suggesting a site of rehearsal, accumulation, and obsessive iteration. The show's centerpiece is a sculpture titled She Has Good Bones, a thronelike chair formed from the white-and-gray body of a ceramic swan. Its neck arcs gracefully into an O, constituting the back of the chair and discreetly cradling a tiny oil painting, within which forks and champagne glasses dance. The swan is covered with hundreds of beautiful diamond-shaped feathers and rests on four sturdy webbed feet.</p>