FEBRUARY 25 - APRIL 9, 2025

Exhibition Opening with the Artist
Tuesday, February 25th, 5 - 7 PM

SOCO Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of deuce, a solo exhibition of new constructions and weavings by artist Martha Clippinger. The gallery will host a public opening reception with the artist on Tuesday, February 25th from 5:00 – 7:00 PM. This will be Clippinger’s first exhibition with SOCO Gallery.

In deuce, works in wood and wool explore division, symmetry, and repetition and interruption through geometric arrangements of color. Working with reclaimed materials like wooden remnants from leftover lumber to misplaced puzzle pieces, the artist studies their shapes, forms, and textures en masse to draw associations and color combinations.

Clippinger views her sculpture-making process as a puzzle of sorts. She is improvisatory and places each shape through intuition. “I tend to create a logic and then disrupt it,” she says. In topple, two squares stacked vertically employ the same interior shapes in different formations. A small, red circle seen in the top square looks as if it is falling in the square below as the shapes within the circle are slightly angled to tilt towards the right.

The title of the exhibition relates to her love of tennis. “When I think deuce, I think of a diagonal relationship of bodies on the rectangular court. The score is tied up in the game but it’s temporary. I guess this loops back to my work in that there is an interest in establishing (or reflecting upon) a rather precarious equilibrium.”

Her tapestries or tapetes begin with line drawings where Clippinger embraces the warps and wefts of the woven structure to create designs composed of horizontals and verticals. She then tests color combinations and communicates the design and palette with weavers, Licha Gonzáles Ruiz and Agustín Contreras López in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico.

In a unique collaboration that began in 2014 during her Fulbright fellowship in Oaxaca, Clippinger continues to work with the couple to produce her designs in wool. Inspired by trips to Mexico and her upbringing in Columbus, GA, with visits to St. EOM's Pasaquan, Clippingers abstractions create conversations across cultures that are linked through color and form. While the artist’s work is open for interpretation, their geometric structures have roots in craft traditions such as weaving and quilt making, as well as in architecture, specifically modern and vernacular.

Martha Clippinger (b. 1983, Columbus, GA)

Born and raised in Columbus, Georgia, Martha Clippinger received a BA from Fordham University and an MFA from Mason Gross School of Art, Rutgers University. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a 2017 Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artists Grant from the Durham Arts Council, a 2014 American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award, and a 2013 Fulbright-Garcia Robles research grant completed in Oaxaca, Mexico. She has been a fellow at Kohler Arts & Industry, the Sam and Adele Golden Art Foundation, Artspace, MacDowell Colony, Edward F. Albee Foundation, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation. Her work has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and The Huffington Post, and is in public collections such as The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and The Columbus Museum. The North Carolina Museum of Art commissioned Clippinger to create two large scale murals in 2024. The two works, Through Line and Vibrating Boundaries are currently on view in the museum's West Building. Clippinger lives and works in Durham, North Carolina.