Artist Statement
Diana Shpungin’s work is dedicated to challenging ideas of drawing through sculptural and time-based forms. Her works are led by a heart-strong conceptualism, involving obsessive processes while exploring themes of memory, failure, loss, and repair, –employing optimism in a quest for empathy across identity lines.The use of graphite pencil is often the foundation of the work.
Diana Shpungin "Always Begin At The End" 2022 marble, graphite, pencil and mixed media Exhibition installation view Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY The exhibition centers around a marble tiled arena, a felled chandelier, a record player, seashells, chairs, chain link fencing, cast body parts, doors, cardboard boxes, a reconfigured American flag, and loose change add to the range of quotidian objects that the artist has carefully scattered throughout this sprawling stage and across the gallery walls. This exhibition features many objects made from cast paper, alongside combined found objects that the artist alters, construction materials, and a single hand-drawn pencil animation metaphorically smashed by rocks. Much of Shpungin’s works can be seen as “drawings” in the sense that they are literally covered in drawing’s most ubiquitous medium: graphite pencil. Shpungin painstakingly covers each object but does not obscure it, in a process that both masks and gives depth. photography: Etienne Frossard