ARDEN + WHITE is pleased to present On the Brink, the first solo gallery exhibition of Tina Shaw’s work. The exhibition emerges from a threshold, a space of uncertainty, resolve, and possibility, where the familiar is released and something new begins to take form.
At the core of Shaw’s practice is a deep sensitivity to color as an emotional and atmospheric force. In On the Brink, color does not merely coat surfaces; it activates them, setting moods, tensions, and quiet reverberations in motion. The works presented include sculpture and sculptural painting, expanding Shaw’s visual language into three dimensions and underscoring her commitment to process and physical engagement. Her approach is playful yet deliberate, embracing improvisation and the inherent unpredictability of making. Materials lead the way, and Shaw responds through her methods, adjusting and allowing the work to assert its own logic.
This exhibition marks Shaw’s exploration of rope, plaster, resin, and her latest investigation into reclaimed metal, a material that challenges her established habits and introduces new forms of resistance. The slow, deliberate process of working with resin through layering, waiting, and sealing creates a rhythm that encourages reflection and sustained attention. Resin, as both a coating and a protective layer, has played a central role in Shaw’s painting practice for the past decade. With the introduction of reclaimed metal, this long standing relationship with preservation expands, prompting a new way of thinking about how surfaces are held, protected, and transformed. Each piece of metal carries its own history, worn, aged, and singular, bearing traces of use and time. Shaw works not to erase these marks, but to hold them, encapsulating their quiet narratives within the work. Resin acts as both seal and armor, hardening surfaces into a suspended state, as if pausing them mid breath. The resulting forms feel at once protected and exposed, fixed yet emotionally charged.
The exhibition marks a milestone that arrives at a moment of profound transition, both material and personal. After fifteen years working in fashion design while simultaneously cultivating her art practice, Shaw has stepped away from the fashion industry to pursue her work as an artist in full. This shift is not simply a change in profession, but a reorientation of identity, rhythm, and risk.
The conceptual undercurrent of On the Brink mirrors Shaw’s lived experience as she navigates the instability of a new path forward. This personal reckoning unfolds alongside a broader collective one felt in the world, suspended between what has been and what is yet to come. Shaw’s work inhabits this shared condition, offering objects that stand in tension between softness and strength, vulnerability and resilience. In doing so, On the Brink becomes not only a marker of arrival, but an acknowledgment of the courage it takes to remain open at the edge of change.
