Elana Herzog

Koffler Arts is excited to welcome Toronto-born, Brooklyn-based artist Elana Herzog to our gallery for a solo exhibition (February 13 – May 11), curated by artist Jessica Stockholder. The exhibition surveys Herzog’s thirty five-year career, and features a new site responsive installation made using wallpaper designed by the artist, metal staples, textiles, and paint.

Herzog uses collected materials, each with their own history, that she cuts, staples, reassembles, and transforms. The fabrics are gathered over years of collecting and thrifting internationally and locally, and range from 80’s chenille bedding to mass produced nylon prints inspired by traditional Russian floral textiles. When collaged, patched, and sculpted, the materials can function metaphorically: “The work that goes into making is part and parcel of the work’s meaning,” says Stockholder.

Part of Herzog’s process is to encrust these materials onto – and into – different surfaces, evoking an entropic process that interacts with new environments. Herzog, who spent a decade as an electrician, explains “while working in the building trades, I became intimately acquainted with the built environment and how it is constructed. On a very personal level I learned about how systems interact and are installed in buildings – what’s behind the walls and under the floors.” Her work can be described as a form of domestic archeology, often engaging architecture and other more intimate forms of material culture.

This exhibition, a look at the past and piecing together of the current moment, probes themes that have fascinated Herzog throughout her career, including sustainability, history, tradition, individualism, sensuality, and public and private. In her hands found and collected textiles form the basis of labor intensive, context-sensitive sculptural installations and discrete pieces; visually dynamic mash-ups, open to multiple readings. As Stockholder says, “Fabrics embody something universal about human beings while they are also imbued with particularity. Herzog’s work asks that we value both. And her agency as an artist resonates with the inventions of all of those who came before her.”

ELANA HERZOG  lives and works in New York City. She holds a BA from Bennington College and an MFA from Alfred University. In 2017 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2023 Herzog’s work was the subject of a survey exhibition Elana Herzog: Ripped, Tangled and Frayed at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in Summit, New Jersey. Her work is currently included in the The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition at The Brooklyn Museum in New York. This summer she will participate in the International Artist-in-Residency program at Artpace San Antonio which will culminate in an exhibition in Fall 2025, .

Elana Herzog’s exhibition runs from February 13 – March 11 at Koffler Arts, 180 Shaw St.

For media inquiries please contact Laura Chapnick-Klein lchapnick@kofflerarts.org.