NEW YORK, NY.- Elizabeth Denny announces that the inaugural exhibition at Denny Gallery, located at 261 Broome Street on the Lower East Side, is a solo exhibition of work by Amanda Valdez.

Amanda Valdez makes colorful, multimedia works, populated by shapes that oscillate between representation and abstraction. The works have a very strong physicality, immediacy, and sense of embodiment. Various materials- embroidery, acrylic paint, fabric and canvas- are sewn together to become continuous, integral elements of the work. Sewn elements are not delicate. Fabric and stitches do not cede to painted elements, and the overall effect is one of materials acting out and asserting themselves. Yet the final work gives a sense of holistic embodiment, wrangled from the potential anxiety of fragmentation.

Amanda Valdez is a Brooklyn based artist, born in Seattle, Washington. She received her MFA from Hunter College in New York City and BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited in El Regreso de los Dinosaurios at the Abrons Art Center in New York City, Same Same But Different at SOIL in Seattle, MsBehavior at the ArtBridge Drawing Room in New York City, The Return to Rattlesnake Mountain at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, New York, Faraway Neighbor at Flux Factory in Queens, Don’t Fence Me In…Or Out at Lesley Heller Workspace in New York City. Valdez has been the recipient of a Yaddo Artist-in-Residency, MacDowell Colony Artistin-Residency, the 2011 College Art Association MFA Professional Development Fellowship, and is a contributing arts editor at Dossier Journal and Bomb Magazine.

Denny Gallery is a contemporary art gallery established by Elizabeth Denny. The gallery specializes in work by emerging and mid-career artists whose practices are interdisciplinary, process-oriented, aware of their social and institutional contexts, and engaged with contemporary issues, materials and technologies. The gallery also provides art advisory services to individuals and companies.