New art exhibit explores the psychology of apparel

On Saturday, Oct. 3, the Patchogue Arts Council held the opening reception for their new exhibit, “Dis-dressed,” which will be on display until Dec. 6.

The group exhibition was developed by the PAC Curatorial Team to “explore the body, clothing, memory, identity, and transformation.”

The featured artists are Johanna Goodman, Lisa Candela, Melanie Berardicelli, and Tanya Kaiser.

The theme “examines clothing, adornment, and the human form as carriers of memory, identity, vulnerability, ritual, and transformation. Across sculpture, collage, painting, and mixed media, the four artists consider what it means to dress, cover, preserve, expose, embellish, fragment, and reconstruct the body,” said Beth Giacummo, executive director of PAC.
“In ‘Dis-dressed,’ garments and bodies become more than subjects. They function as vessels for personal histories, cultural expectations, grief, faith, childhood, fantasy, and changing ideas of self. Clothing can offer protection or impose identity; adornment can commemorate, transform, conceal, or reveal. Through four distinct practices, the exhibition looks beyond fashion to consider the psychological and symbolic weight of what surrounds and ultimately represents the body,” said Giacummo.

After the unexpected death of her brother, Melanie Berardicelli turned to art to process and overcome her grief through faith and remembrance. 

“Through sculpture, painting, and embroidery, she gives imagined identities back to these figures, naming them for heroic people from her own life and transforming mourning into acts of remembrance,” said the PAC curatorial team.
An experienced forensic artist, Berardicelli’s facial reconstructions have aided in missing-person cold cases.

In  “Crystallized Innocence: The Fragility of Childhood in a Consuming World,” Tanya Kaiser creates a glittering coffin for dolls and nursery crib items.

“Objects traditionally associated with safety, care, faith, and belonging become simultaneously precious and inaccessible as their soft surfaces harden beneath crystalline growth,” said Giacummo.
“Among the works is a First Communion gown handmade by Kaiser’s mother, transformed from an intimate family artifact into a meditation on faith, protection, memory, and the passage from childhood into adulthood. Sugar operates throughout the series as both material and metaphor—evoking sweetness and reward while also suggesting consumption, excess, vulnerability, and entrapment,” said Giacummo.

With previous work being featured in The New Yorker and The New York Times, Johanna Goodman’s “Catalogue of Imaginary Beings” comprises over 700 works collected over the span of 10 years.

“Drawing from more than two decades of portraiture and collage, Goodman constructs fantastical figures whose dramatically exaggerated bodies and garments exist somewhere between portrait, icon, fashion image, and imagined artifact,” said Giacummo.

Also drawing from physical and psychological experiences and drawbacks of the corporeal form, Lisa Candela’s forms often appear “contorted, stretched, elongated, or fragmented—sometimes in conflict, other times in harmony with nature—reflecting the trauma, tension, and shame imposed on the body. Her figures engage in dialogue with both art historical references and contemporary cultural imagery,” said Giacummo.