Charles Platt / encrypted messages / Installation view

Charles Platt / encrypted messages / Installation view

Charles Platt / encrypted messages / Installation view

Charles Platt / encrypted messages / Installation view

Charles Platt / encrypted messages / Installation view

Charles Platt / encrypted messages / Installation view

Charles Platt / encrypted messages / Installation view

Charles Platt, Re-Union, 2000, mixed media, 48 x 96 inches 

Charles Platt, Blood, Bones and Healing Devices, 2001, mixed media, 75 x 96 inches 

Charles Platt, Going Nowhere, 2003, mixed media, 48 x 96 inches 

Charles Platt, Mixed Doubles, 2004, mixed media, 68 x 126 inches 

Charles Platt, The Bed and the Shower; "Hes Not Worth Your Tears", 2007, mixed media, 76 x 88 inches 

Charles Platt, Cumulative Impacts, 2008, mixed media, 72 x 144 inches 

Charles Platt, Unknown Consequences, 2011, mixed media, 48 x 96 inches 

Charles Platt, Sign Here, 2008, mixed media, 28 x 20.5 inches 

Charles Platt, The 2nd Half on Milan's Pants, 2010, mixed media, 28 x 20.5 inches 

Charles Platt, Your Hit Parade, 2010, mixed media, 15 x 27.5 inches 

Charles Platt, Gone to War, 2011, mixed media, 15 x 27.5 inches 

Charles Platt, Fox Trot, 2014, mixed media, 15 x 27.5 inches 

Charles Platt, Bad Purses, 2011, mixed media, 48 x 56.5 inches 

Charles Platt, The Hired Man, 1959, mixed media, 58 x 38 inches

Charles Platt, April 19...,1950, 2008, mixed media, 15 x 27.5 inches

CHARLES PLATT

"encrypted messages"

January 19 – February 26, 2017

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Charles Platt 

encrypted messages

January 19th - February 26th, 2017

Opening reception Thursday, January 19th, 7-9 pm

 

Freight+Volume is pleased to announce Charles Platt's new solo exhibition, encrypted messages. The exhibition showcases Platt's extensive body of collage work, a practice that he maintains parallel to his career as an architect. Integrating found objects, particularly clothing, which are transformed and restructured, his collages are both formally dynamic and suggestive of an elusive, interior narrative. 

 

As the artist tells it, he started making his collages in 1959, when he abandoned an oil canvas in the fall and returned in the spring to find a pair of workman’s overalls hanging on it. This became his first serious collage work, The Hired Man. The found materials in Platt’s work thus have held a dual function of providing a formal groundwork as well as content. Everyday objects, no matter how banal, carry a wide array of associations, and possess the ability to evoke powerful responses in the viewer. 

 

Platt's work exploits both these facets; his dissection of common objects yields a host of novel forms, which he organizes into tautly constructed arrangements. His juxtaposition of clothing and personal effects with abstract backgrounds conjures an almost uncanny sense of disconnection between fact and fiction. Platt's handling of the found materials that form his collages reflects his architectural training. Clothing and shoes, persistent motifs in his oeuvre, are cut open to reveal their surprisingly complex internal structures, and these inner frameworks in turn define the compositions as a whole. These collages have the ability to function as portraits, as with Tom, where an arrangement of flayed open shirts evokes the ghostly presence of the implied owner. 

 

Platt also applies this constructive sensibility to a remarkable variety of other objects, from wallets and travel bags to wire coat hangers and measuring tapes. His series of deconstructed wallets and purses paint a portrait of the instruments of travel and the lives they contain. Other of his works, such as Double Diptych, use preexisting materials as a formal building blocks in abstract assemblages.  

 

Charles Platt graduated from Harvard College and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, and studied painting at the Art Students League of New York and the Boston Museum School. Platt has been a practicing architect since 1960, and is currently a partner at Platt Byard Dovell White Architects, LLP. His firm has received many design awards and his work has been published around the world. Platt has had two solo exhibitions of his collages. 

 

Please join us for the opening reception with the artist on Thursday, January 19th from 7 to 9pm. Refreshments will be served. For further information, please contact nick@freightandvolume.com, or call 212.691.7700.