About

Kenote and McClenaghan work collectively to dissect nature, the body, and architecture. Re-Union transforms those rooted ideas through abstraction. Both artists mine internal and personal experiences that are expressed through each medium. Anthropomorphizing shapes work to question what is inside, what is outside, and where and how these forms and structures exist in our everyday world.

McClenaghan’s work of bodily forms quickly and easily converse with Kenote’s painted shapes and colors. This speaks to the friendship that the artists nurtured since attending graduate school together. Though Kenote maintains a studio in Brooklyn and McClenaghan in Troy, this exhibition at Peep Space allows for a reunion of the artists in between their respective New York locales. Re-Union also works to reference each artist’s relationships with their material practice. Both McClenaghan and Kenote work with materials they had previously left behind. For Kenote this is painting, after a long period of creating installation and sculptural work. For McClenaghan, this is reductive sculpture after a period of painting and mixed media work. McClenaghan reunites with personal histories through her sculptures, and Kenote recontextualizes forms and shapes taken from her earlier work using new structures, borders, and mediums. The two artists’ work, when displayed together, enters into a contemporary dialogue, blurring the boundaries of the mediums within which they are defined. McClenaghan’s sculptures move from floor to wall and reveal hints of brush textures, creating soft movements. Kenote’s canvases multiply and stack, allowing moments of fusion between the wall and the floor. Collectively the works harmonize and welcome the viewer into their creators’ reunion.

Debbi Kenote is a New York based artist who received her MFA from Brooklyn College. She has shown her work throughout the U.S. including Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA, Peekskill Project, Peekskill, NY, Deanna Evans Projects, NYC, NY and Front Room Gallery, NYC, NY. In 2019 she had her first solo exhibition at the Canvas by Querencia Studio in Brooklyn, New York. Kenote’s work has been published through Art of Choice and Page Bond Gallery. Kenote has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, DNA Residency, Nes Artist Residency, and CAI Projects. She has curated exhibitions at Open House and the 2018 and 2019 SPRING/BREAK Art Show.

Alyssa McClenaghan is a New York based artist who received her MFA in Painting from Brooklyn College. She has shown her work throughout the U.S. including The Albany Public Library, Pine Hills, Albany, NY, The Hunter Thomas Project Room, NYC, NY, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL, Novado Gallery, Jersey City, NJ, Collar Works Gallery, Troy, NY and Site: Brooklyn Gallery, Brooklyn NY. McClenaghan’s work has been published in ArtMaze Magazine’s 20th Anniversary issue and will be featured in Friend of the Artist Book: Volume 13 in Summer of 2021. She has been an artist in residence at the Studios at Mass MoCA, at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild and at the ChaNorth Residency run through ChaShaMa. Working with materials typically used in construction, McClenaghan’s work continually mines the ideas of labor, femininity, gender, and her own lived history.

PeepSpace is a project space for emerging and established artists to share their practice and vision with a wider audience. Founded in 2020 by Monica Carrier & Jane Kang Lawrence.

Images: (left) Alyssa McCleneghan Paying Bills Sometimes Lent Her the Illusion of Order, 2019, 48 x 12 x 9.5”, Foam Insulation, Joint Compound, Dura Bond, Acrylic Exterior House Paint(right) Debbi Kenote Pericarp, 2021, 60 x 51”, Acrylic on Linen