Artists are often praised for their personal style — extending their visual prowess to self-care and presentation.
It makes sense, then, that many young artists and galleries have begun using fashion and accessories as an extension of their aesthetic identity — issuing collectible items as a wearable strain of their work.
Tauba Auerbach’s Diagonal Press pins, Andrea Bergart’s basketball bags, Katie Stout’s sweatsuits, Grace Miceli’s Art Baby Girl range of clothing and accessories, Cecilia Salama’s phone cases, Los Angeles gallery Moran Bondaroff’s T-shirts and Aidan Alexis Koch’s jewelry have become calling card, streetwear-type items for specific downtown social circles.
Now artists Ida Badal enters the accessories ring with necklaces and retooled watches to accompany her solo show Pothole, opening Saturday at the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society. The show — on view through September — is orchestrated by the curatorial collective, Auto Body.
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Badal, who a year ago relocated from New York to her native San Diego, focuses on time as a medium for discussion. A graduate of The Cooper Union, her environmental paintings portray a contrast of nature and industry from uncommon vantage points — offering examinations either cloud height or microscopically up close.
She feels that accessories are a friendly extension of her art practice. “I find it a really nice way to make art more easily accessible and affordable and to be able to share and support your friends by wearing their work. It’s nice to expand my own ways of expressing myself visually and it’s great to see what my contemporaries come up with as well,” she said.
Badal’s necklaces are made of intravenous tubing, filled with sand and sifted iron ore that she collected while fulfilling a residency in Joshua Tree. The faces of vintage watches have been removed and also filled with sand — creating a wearable sculpture evocative of an hourglass, an extension of Badal’s meditation on time. Badal has priced both items at $55. They are available for purchase in Bellport, as well as on her web site.
The artist explained how her practice has materialized into accessories: “The accessories are an extension of my art practice in the sense that they represent a sort of time capsule or container for time, which has been a running theme in my most recent body of work. I’ve been thinking on transience, environmental and cultural shifts while also focusing on the present.
“There is an absurdity and irony in looking down at a watch that doesn’t actually tell time, but instead represents how time is fleeting.”