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Exhibition4/7/2013
"Silent Opera", a solo show at One River Gallery, Englewood, NJ. April 19 through May 24, 2013. Reception Friday, April 19, 6 - 9 pm.
Ken Weathersby’s
exhibition, Silent Opera, presents works that transpose and shuffle
optical and physical aspects. In the paintings, grids of primary color
or high-contrast black and white are interrupted, displaced, removed,
enclosed or cut into. In the collage-based works, found images are
submerged under dense, wooden grids.
The idea of a painting’s
abstract face or a photographed human image as a site of display is
muted and complicated by these interventions. When an object is
exhibited, it is like a performer stepping forward onto a stage, and if
the sound of the song is cut or muffled, we hear the sound of the
performer’s footsteps, the incidental stage business, the bump and
clatter of conventions that normally surround the song.
“Responding to the given conditions of painting gives me something to
work against. I’ve tried to separate the parts of physical language of
painting, the paint surface, the wooden support, the canvas or linen,
and reset them in new relations. Recently I’ve also been cannibalizing
my bookshelf, taking whole pages mostly from art books, and building on
top of them; hiding them, replacing them, saving them, burying them.” One River Gallery - 49 N. Dean St., Englewood, NJ 07631
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Publication4/7/2013
Hearing a classic rock riff births a false memory concerning Dieter Krieg's giant paintings in "Refigured Painting - the German Image 1960-88".
Neo-Expressionism and Power Chords
by Ken Weathersby
Hearing the guitar riff toward the end of Boston’s 1976 rock song
“Peace of Mind” from a passing car radio the other day, I was a little
surprised to find myself gripped by the sound, just as when I was a
teenager and predictably compelled by such things many years ago... read the rest here
Exhibition1/31/2013 "Nearly Neutral" curated by John O'Connor
January 29 - February 26, 2013 Heimbold Visual Arts Center at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY artists:
Michele Alpern, Ivin Ballen, Dawn Clements, Matthew Fisher, Linda Francis, Rachel Hayes, Ridley Howard, Allan Macintyre, Jerome Marshak, Ryan Mrozowkski, Matthew Northridge, Bruce Pearson, Antonia Perez, Shahpour Pouyan, Kanishka Raja, Timothy Smith, Bruce Stiglich, Ken Weathersby # # #
Exhibition1/31/2013
"Cache" a solo show of five new works at NIAD Art Center, Richmond, CA, through February 25, 2013.
"For his new collages, New York artist Ken Weathersby has taken to
cannibalizing his bookshelf. Using entire pages from an art book, mostly
images of Greek sculpture, or other figurative images, Weathersby
buries each under one of his signature wooden grids. The pieces become
elegant and complex explorations of the picture plane. Cache: New Work From Ken Weathersby, a selection of the artist’s most recent collages are on view in NIAD’s annex gallery."
--NIAD Gallery Director Tim Buckwalter # # #
Curating9/23/2012
(for "The Structural Catalyst" - my extended essay & slide show about this exhibition on youtube, click here.)
“Mark Dagley 1976 - 2011” An Abstract Retrospective at Kent Place Gallery
The Kent Place
Gallery will present a chronological selection of artworks spanning 35 years by
Mark Dagley, from Monday, September 10, through Friday, October 5, 2012. There will be a reception for the artist from
6-8 pm on Friday, September 28.
Mark Dagley’s visually dazzling, exploratory abstract art has been exhibited in New York and
internationally since the mid-1980s.
This Kent Place Gallery exhibition is a carefully selected timeline,
including strong pieces from all periods, reaching back to a few very early
works from 1976 and concluding with recent paintings. (To coincide with this
overview, Minus Space gallery in Brooklyn will open an exciting show of
Dagley’s newest works, called “Structural Solutions.” The Minus Space exhibition
runs September 7 – October 27.)
In the
paintings, works on paper and sculptures at Kent Place, one can see Dagley developing
a wide range of artistic possibilities, including hallucinatory optical and
retinal color effects, intense patterns, contradictory painterly spaces, and
geometric constructions. There is a through-line
of abstraction, and of surprising wit and inventiveness, evidence of a rigorous
and playful sensibility linking all the objects on view.
One of the most
striking pieces in the show is a chunky, stacked “ziggurat” from the mid-eighties
that seems to be both a sculpture and a painting. Its squat monumentality and position on the
floor say sculpture—sculpture that refers to architecture. Its black, reflective surface is lush and
slick, almost reading as standing liquid. This surface is clearly a poured
paint film, and the stretched canvas visible on the sides of each of the
object’s “steps” further links it to traditions of painting in general, and to other
black paintings in particular. One can
think of Stella’s “pin stripe” paintings, or of the black square images of
Malevich. The glossy surface and
simplified formal progressions in such works by Dagley also resemble early
video game icons, introducing a flavor of the digital. The condensation of
these implications and more into this elegant self-contained object has unusual
humor and poetry.
Gallery Director
Ken Weathersby said, “I am very excited to be able to present this show at Kent
Place. Mark Dagley is a significant
artist, someone whose achievement and ongoing uncompromised creativity I
greatly admire. When we first discussed
the possibility of his exhibiting here, it was his idea to do a chronological
overview. What could be better in a school setting, for young artists to see,
than a record of someone creating, developing and experimenting over three and
a half decades? We included a group of
working drawings as well as finished pieces.
Mark’s thinking is present in all of this, but seeing his process and
notes to himself in the drawings gives a peek behind the curtain, to some of
how he gets there, which will be great for my students. This is also a show
that contemporary artists will want to see.
I can think of many active painters in New York (myself included) who
can be informed by it.”
Mark Dagley was
born in Washington DC and lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. Venues for his recent New York solo shows
include Minus Space, and Up & Co. He
has shown extensively in the US and Europe since the mid-1980s, including many
important solo and group exhibitions, and is included in many major public and
private collections.
Kent Place Gallery is on the campus of Kent Place School, 42
Norwood Avenue, Summit, NJ. Gallery
hours are Monday – Friday, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm.
For more information call (908) 273-0900, or visit www.kentplace.org.
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Exhibition7/28/2012
Group Exhibition
Masquerader
curated by Ken Resseger
Aug 5 - Aug 12, 2012
Reception: Aug 5, 4-7 pm
Artists:
George Blaha
Michael Brennan
Just Kids
Carey Maxon
KD Resseger
Lynn Talbot
Ken Weathersby
"Charlie
plays an actor who bungles several scenes and is kicked out. He returns
convincingly dressed as a lady and charms the director. Even so, Charlie
never makes it into the film, winding up at the bottom of a well.
- The Masquerader, 1914 starring Charlie Chaplin (synopsis of) —-"
The Howard Art Project
1386 Dorchester Ave.
Dorchester MA
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Exhibition7/11/2012
Group Exhibition
Post-Op
July 12–August 17, 2012
Opening: Thursday, July 12, 5-7pm
Artists: Rachel Beach, Peter Demos, Andrew Falkowski, Emilio
Gomariz, Jay Shinn, Suzanne Song, Rebecca Ward, and Ken Weathersby
"Mixed Greens presents Post-Op, a group exhibition
exploring the influence of Op Art within contemporary visual art
practice. The recognizable movement of the mid-60s was dismissed by many
critics of the time, but the movement—grown out of geometric
abstraction, trompe l’oeil, and the uncertainty and perceptual change of
the mid-20th Century—has proven to be of current importance. Post-Op
brings together eight artists working in a variety of media, all of whom
contemplate perception, form, function, and rationality to create works
tied to the lineage of the Op movement. Through color, line, lighting,
and even animation, these artists explore visual illusion in exciting
ways.
Ken Weathersby uses colored patterns to render optically
stimulating surfaces. Then, through physical interventions, he removes
and replaces areas of painted canvas with surgical precision. While the
tight acrylic and graphite patterns generate a sense of retinal
movement, the interventions call attention to the physicality within,
and extending beyond, the illusory picture plane."
Mixed Greens -- 531 west 26th street, 1st floor -- new york, ny 10001 -- tel: 212 331 8888 -- fax: 212 343 2134 -- info@mixedgreens.com
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Exhibition5/17/2012
Ken WeathersbyStrange Fit1 June – 1 July, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, 1 June. 7-9pm
Hours
11am to 6pm, Tuesday through Sunday and by appointment
Location
177 North 9th Street Brooklyn, NY 11211
Contact:
E: info@pierogi.com
www.pierogi2000.com
"Ken Weathersby’s exhibition, Strange Fit, presents abstract
paintings that shuffle optical and physical elements, playing the visual
against the tactile. In each painting there
is an unraveling of expectations as paint, linen, and wood deviate from their
usual roles. Grids of bright color on
the painted fronts of the canvases create retinal effects like moiré patterns,
and the suggestion of visual movement and space. But those surfaces are often interrupted by a
reordering of the parts of painting. Works
have pieces removed and replaced, or have parts of their painted faces covered,
reversed or hidden from view. Painting
seems to have been taken apart, then carefully fitted back together, but fitted
together strangely, with odd elisions, inversions and substitutions."
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Exhibition2/26/2012
The Other Ken Weathersby Gallery Aferro - 73 Market Street, Newark, NJ 07102 http://www.aferro.org
March 10 – April 14, 2012 Reception, March 10, 7pm.
"Ken Weathersby’s exhibition at Gallery Aferro includes easel-sized,
patterned abstract paintings, photographic works, and several
wall-mounted boxes containing tiny, crafted objects resembling miniature
paintings.
The works in the show shuffle the traditional given stuff of pictures
and picture-making. The paintings are subtly pulled apart, or have
pieces cut out and removed, or their painted faces refuse to be seen.
The wall-mounted boxes may be mere models for groupings of larger works,
or may be works in themselves. This intentional ambiguity extends to
photographs included in the show, paired portraits, which offer false
resemblance and shifting identity in seemingly straightforward profile
pictures." # # #
Curating2/14/2012
image: Untitled (Parallels 66), detail, 2011, acrylic polymer and bismuth on canvas, Jeffrey Scott Mathews
You Have Found a Way to Be Here
Jeffrey Scott Mathews
Kent Place Gallery
Tuesday, February 14 – Friday, March 9, 2012.
Reception: 6-8 pm, Friday, March 9.
Mathew’s exhibition, titled “You Have Found a Way to Be Here”, includes abstract works in the unusual medium of bismuth on canvas. Spectacular, colorful deposits of the melted metal crystallize on the surface of several paintings. Others works feature powerful, quilted geometric grids of colored fabric. The whole exhibition unites an underlying mystical aura with a lucid understanding of contemporary painting’s possibilities.
The artist has said, “The exhibition title taken as a precept relates to the tenets of hermeticism, the occult, alchemy, magick, consciousness and devotion. What is to be found in the work is primarily geometric, (approximately) symmetric, ordered, gestured and crystallized. I am intent on expanding upon Minimalist and Post-Minimalist strategies.”
Mathews work offers a complex statement, highly attuned to the visual and physical properties of painting. It is also geared toward the possibility of activating a historical link. He cites his interest and involvement with the aims of past artists and writers, including JG Ballard, the Shakers, Jorge Luis Borges, Yves Klein, Anni Albers and others.
Regarding his unusual technique, the artist explains, “Triangles in repetition and sewn together become hermetic tapestries… molten bismuth is applied to linen or canvas; tracing the path of the artists hand, only to be naturally crystallized over.”
Gallery Director Ken Weathersby said of Mathew’s art, “The surfaces are incredibly palpable and create a site where the artist compresses information, sensation and energy into a concentrated and refined form. In this mixture we see artist’s actions and the workings of matter joined in an unusual way. An enormous amount of processing and discrete conjuring results in works both rugged and delicate. A kind of lucid, canny, post-post-modern version of the alchemist’s “philosopher’s stone” seems on the verge of forming before our eyes. These works are strange, but entirely convincing.”
The artist is a graduate of the MFA program at Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Michigan. His work has previously been included in group shows at French Neon, St. Cecilias Convent, Hal Bromm Gallery, X Initiaive, all in NY, and a recent two-person show at Jolie Laide Gallery in Philadelphia, among other exhibitions.
Kent Place Gallery is on the campus of Kent Place School, 42 Norwood Avenue, Summit, NJ. Gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. For more information call (908) 273-0900, or visit www.kentplace.org.
# # #
Interview1/20/2012
John O'Connor interviewed me for NY Arts Magazine.
To read the full interview, click the NY ARTS logo above.
KW: "In
my paintings those various given terms tend to get outside their usual
roles, to do different things. Sometimes the linen support and the
painted front switch places. Sometimes the wood gets itself in between
the paint and the linen. Paintings seem to be undoing something about
how they would normally work."
I talk about zombies too.
# # #
Exhibition1/3/2012
"Textility," at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey.
Reception: Friday, January
13, 6-8pm.
Through April 1, 2012.
Sunday, March 25, 2:00 pm-4:00 pm, talk with the artists and curators.
"Co-curators Mary Birmingham and Joanne Mattera coined the word "textility" to
describe a new sensibility that they divide into three separate
categories: paintings without paint (and its corollary, drawing without
pencil), textiles without thread, and idiosyncratic work made with a
strong focus
on materiality and process." (Sharon Butler - Two Coats of Paint blog)
"Ken Weathersby deconstructs painting's physical components, interrupting the expected relationships among wooden stretcher, canvas, and painted image. A cutaway section on his diptych, "179 (twn)", reveals a gridded wooden network that suggests the warp and weft structure of weaving and also references the wooden stretcher bars. If Lucio Fontana cut his canvas to reveal the space behind painting, Ken Weathersby seems to dissect his, displacing, inserting, and reversing sections." (Mary Birmingham - "Textility" catalog essay)
Participating artists: Joell Baxter, Caroline Burton, Sharon Butler,
Mary Carlson, Jennifer Cecere, Pip Culbert, Elisa D'Arrigo, Grace
DeGennaro, Barbara Ellmann, Carly Glovinski, Elana Herzog, Marietta
Hoferer, Nava Lubelski, Stephen Maine, Lael Marshall, Derick Melander,
Sam Messenger, Sam Moyer, Lalani Nan, Aric Obrosey, Gelah Penn, Debra
Ramsay, Susan Still Scott, Arlene Shechet, Susanna Starr, Leslie Wayne,
Ken Weathersby and Peter Weber.
A fully illustrated catalog that includes essays by both curators
will accompany the show.
Visual Arts Center of New Jersey
68 Elm Street, Summit, NJ 07901
908.273.9121
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Artist Talk (video)12/20/2011
Artist talk at Aferro Gallery on 12-8-11.
Click on the image to see the talk on youtube.
(10 min.)
# # #
Exhibitions9/1/2011 Without End I'll be showing three new paintings in the exhibition, "Without End" at University of Delaware's Crane Gallery in Philadelphia.
“…
In this exhibition, the work selected looks through the lens of
process in making art, and specifically the construction and
deconstruction of ideas, formula, aesthetics and memory…” Sept. 8 - Oct. 6, 2011 (reception Sept. 8, 6-9pm)
Crane Gallery
1400 American St.
Philadelphia, PAand in...Factiona group show, at University of Dayton, in Dayton, Ohio.Oct. 3 - Oct. 24, 2011 (reception Tuesday, October 18th, 6 - 8pm.Art Street, Studio D
University of Dayton
Dayton Ohio, 45469
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Exhibition5/26/2011
Time Is the Diamond (detail), Ken Weathersby, 2011, printed paper on linen over archival foamboard, less than 5" tall
Some Walls
"Time Is the Diamond" will be on view August 7 - September 25, 2011. Some Walls is a curatorial and writing project in a private home in Oakland, California directed by artist and writer Chris Ashley.
Ken Weathersby’s "Time is the Diamond"
Some argue that painting, like Humpty Dumpty, has fallen off the
wall, taken a great fall, and can’t be put back together again: dropped,
cracked open, oozed out, and finished. But painters like Ken Weathersby
have shown that painting appears to continue living a healthy life long
after its reported demise. Paintings do things and are about things
that other mediums can’t match. While much art continues on a seemingly
rapid path towards newer technologies and entertainment, encouraging
fast looking and sound bite-like understanding, the technology of most
painting, handmade and viewed slowly, at a finely granular level, might
gradually be seen as anti-technology, or rather, as a kind of antidote
to quicker, bigger, and shinier art. The technology of painting is more
like Fred Flintstone’s car, made out of stone, wood, and animal skins,
and powered and stopped by the driver’s feet.
In addition to the fundamentals of painting, however, its literal and
conceptual deconstruction is an issue inherent to the medium throughout
history. Painting has moved from being made on a specific wall, to
being made for a specific wall or setting, and ultimately made to be
completely portable and adaptable to different environments. Patronage
has shifted among the church, the state, the wealthy, and the commoner.
And, periodically, the question asked again and again is, just what is a
painting: what shape is it, is it flat, how does it hang, what size is
it, and must it be made with paint?
Ken Weathersby’s art engages smartly and sensitively with the
possibilities of painting. Simultaneously clear-minded and intuitive,
rational and risky, he pulls painting apart and puts it back together,
making something new and quirky and thoughtful. Canvases are sliced and
diced, but unlike Lucio Fontana’s cuts opening a void, Weathersby’s cuts
are surgical, so that parts can be reattached, or transplanted, or
opened to view another level of the painting. He cuts, rotates, shifts,
reverses, and inserts. The classic grid or checkerboard is interrupted
or made imperfect. Fronts and backs visibly co-exist, and the rarely
seen chassis, staples, nails, screws, and threads are exposed. Elaborate
carpentry normally behind the scenes becomes a central player.
Weathersby’s paintings don’t merely question what a painting is, but
provide physical evidence of several visual and philosophical
resolutions to the properties, problems, expectations, and
contradictions of painting by exploring front and back, inside and
outside, the plane of the surface and depicted and actual space, pattern
and disruption, and craft and art.
Weathersby’s small works, made with foam core, linen, wood, tape, and
the images of his work reproduced on exhibition announcements, are not
exactly studies. Although they use many of the same motifs and
structures and share the same subjects and concepts found in his larger
size work, they are individual pieces that can stand alone. To call them
miniatures would not be an insult or diminution, but instead a useful
label to place these small pieces as a specific set within Weathersby’s
body of work. And though small, each works scale reads as large and
full-sized, or, rather, right-sized.
Lined up on a simple shelf and leaning against the wall are
twenty-two works in less than twelve linear feet, the smallest measuring
approximately 2.5 x 1.5 inches, the largest, a real outlier, at just
over 8 x 5 inches. This installation, Time is the Diamond,
titled after a song by the American band Low, provides an overview and
record of Weathersby’s invention, wit, and curiosity, of what painting
might be, aspires to be, and can’t overcome. The song’s dense, abstract,
almost impenetrable lyrics have a folk quality, listing things the
singer is or is not, or has and has lost, akin to the hybrid and
transgressive qualities in Weathersby’s art that are ultimately
resolved, over time, in honed, precise, finished works:
If I’m not a lion
And I’m not an island
If time is the diamond
Well all right.
Weathersby’s art is extremely forthright but not immediately fully
forthcoming; initially appearing accessible, it is complicated, dense,
and full of rich and intriguing contradiction. At a quick glance, his
images are of a type one might expect to be manufactured, but instead we
see that every single aspect of the work is handcrafted, from the
elaborate stretchers and framing, to the taped and painted areas, to the
surface cuts and insertions. Materially and structurally, he makes
plain how the object is made, but there is often a sense of peekaboo or
sleight of hand in the layers, displacement, and disruption of image and
spaces. One would expect the use of the grid and checkerboard to lead
to stability, but more often than not these normally regular fields are
set ajar, slid apart, flipped open, broken, or misaligned. This is not
art that panders, but rather insists that we engage by visually
assembling, disassembling, and reassembling each work’s constituent
parts in order to see, experience, and understand a holistic image and
object. This is one way that Weathersby’s art extends painting’s
possibilities.
Weathersby also extends paintings’s possibilities via the emotional
and psychological spaces and situations it instigates. Intellectually,
we might encounter his work as a visual puzzle to be solved, but there
is more at stake here. What is the emotion of assembly and disassembly,
visibility and invisibility, regularity and disruption, and why is this
interesting and how does it enhance our lives? What is the psychology of
gaps, slips, incisions, displacements, and what use is this to us?
Weathersby’s art isn’t cruel or demanding, but is instead made with the
utmost regard for the viewer, conveying integrity, openness, and
generosity. Respectfully but rigorously, the spaces of the paintings
echo the intimate, perplexing, meaningful spaces of ourselves, our
bodies and thoughts, the things we acknowledge and know and attempt to
share but are often beyond words. In this work we encounter our own
self-knowledge and contradictions, aspirations and ambiguity. By
confronting the parts of Weathersby’s art we can experience something in
bits and pieces as right and whole in many different configurations and
encounters. This is Weathersby’s diamond, painting’s health, and Art’s
payoff.
Chris Ashley
Oakland, CA
August 2011
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Publication3/1/2011
New American Paintings 2011 Northeast Edition features three recent KW paintings. Backward-facing painting "173"(Lnd)--detail above-- is on the back cover. The juror for this edition was Laura Hoptman, curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, NY.
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Exhibition2/20/2011
179(twnR), detail, Ken Weathersby, 2010
POSTCONCEPTUALISM: THE MALLEABLE OBJECT opens March 10, 2011 at University of Maryland's Stamp Gallery.
Artist panel-- March 17, 2011, 6pm.
Essay by Mark Cameron Boyd (excerpt):
"POSTCONCEPTUALISM: THE MALLEABLE OBJECT explores the work of nine artists who individually extend and expand upon the theories and ideas of Conceptual Art in unique ways...
...Recent work by Ken Weathersby resurrects painting through a negotiation between the intellectual and physical properties of the support. Weathersby subverts the 'language of painting' through a three-dimensional manipulation that disrupts our perception by creating a 'no-space space.'..."
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Residency2/18/2011
studio aferro, Newark, NJ
My studio at home has become something of a puzzle with many complicated moving parts--work in progress and tools and books take up an increasing amount of the space.
Starting February 19, 2011, I'll be doing a residency at Aferro Studios in Newark, NJ. The residency goes until August of 2011, so for the next six months, I'll see what it's like to work a little differently. (Update: The residency was extended to a full year-- I'll be there until February of 2012.) It will be the first time since my loft in Williamsburg in the 90's that I'll have a dedicated, work-only studio space of over 1,200 sq. feet. The studio at Aferro should allow me to spread out and work on more projects at once, and on larger pieces.
Evonne Davis and Emma Wilcox run the program there, and they seem to have a good thing going, attracting many interesting artists from all over.
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Curating2/7/2011
sweet stain (detail), Bruce Stiglich, oil, acrylic, pencil & ink on canvas, paper, wood & cashmere
Summit, NJ--
Bruce Stiglich’s “Accumulation/Hallucination”
Kent Place Gallery
Monday, February 14 – Friday, March 11
Closing reception Friday March 11, 6—8 pm
Works in the show combine painting, drawing and the gathering of found objects to create complex, beautiful and densely painted collections of surfaces and images.
“Sweet Stain” (above), uses a wide range of means, including oil paint, acrylic, graphite, ink, wood, and, crucially, cashmere. A tiny scrap of stained cashmere formed the starting point of this complex work. Stiglich painted a portrait of the scrap of fabric, enlarged and copied his own painting, represented it again in another way, again and again, and each new view became a part of the whole. The cluster of representations contains mirrorings and repetitions, but also surprises that open up space for the imagination. It is a kaleidoscopic outgrowth of remembering and reflecting. Yet the subject (if that shred of stained fabric is really the subject) remains enigmatic.
Such a ceaseless return to a mute and mysterious object, and the possibly obsessive circling around it with art, brings to mind Citizen Kane’s rosebud, Proust’s madeleine, that little scrap of blue velvet so prized by Frank in David Lynch’s film. The point for me is that Stiglich creates an exciting, almost hallucinatory visual world, and the work resists collapsing into an easy interpretation.
New York Times art critic Ken Johnson has said, “Style in Bruce Stiglich's work is psychological, as the seemingly obsessive repetition of tiny marks that build up into dense vibrating textures suggest the feverishly compulsive activity of an inspired monomaniac. You may be reminded of Jackson Pollock's drip works or folk artists who are driven to decorate their homes with countless polka dots or flattened beer cans.”
Bruce says, “My work is a compiling of personal history. I work in series. These series become installations. They span an extended period of time. It begins with a discovery of found images, objects and doodles that to me seem incomplete. The process of completing the images is self referential in nature.”
Bruce Stiglich’s art work has been seen in numerous exhibitions in recent years in New York City and the New York area, in Pennsylvania, and in Miami, Florida. He currently teaches at Parsons School of Design, and has also taught at Pont-Aven School of Art in France, and at the State University of New York. He has been a curator of several art exhibitions at MyPAC, in Miami, FL.
Kent Place Gallery
42 Norwood Ave.
Summit, NJ 07902
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Exhibition1/13/2011
THERELY BARE
(curated by John Tallman and Ron Buffington)
January 14-February 15, 2011
Reception:
Friday, January 14, 5:30pm - 8:00pm
Kate Beck (usa)
Alan Ebnother (usa)
Kevin Finklea (usa)
Billy Gruner and Sarah Keighery (aus)
Jeffrey Cortland Jones (usa)
Michael Paul Oman-Reagan (usa)
Lorri Ott (usa)
Leopoldine Roux (belg)
Clary Stolte (nd)
Lars Strandh (nor)
Richard Van Der Aa (aus/fr)
Iemke Van Dijk (nd)
Ken Weathersby (usa)
Guido Winkler (nd)
Lain York (usa)
THERELY BARE, an exhibition of non-objective art curated by John Tallman and Ron Buffington, will feature the work of 16 artists from around the world, including the United States, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Working in a style sometimes called reductive, these artists share a subversive approach to the traditions of painting. The exhibition title is wordplay, an inversion of “barely there.” It also hints at the curatorial premise of the exhibition. The abstract paintings in the show are explicitly physical and tend to have a forthright facture and presence, but also work within the means of painting itself to obfuscate, conceal or contradict expectations. In this sense, the work is hiding in plain sight. THERELY BARE challenges typical modes of viewing and raises questions about perception itself.
The curators, both professors at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, curated this exhibition specifically for AVA , but it will also be traveling to Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville, and the Art Gallery of Kent State University later in the year.
AVA Gallery
30 Frazier Avenue
Chattanooga, TN 37450
# # #
Exhibition1/13/2011
detail, Syntax, Ken Weathersby, acrylic on canvas, 2005
VISUAL PHRASING
(curated by Virginia Butera)
January 20 - April 17, 2011
Reception: Jan. 20, 4:30 - 7 pm, (artist's panel, 7 - 8 pm)
Jonathan Allmaier, Patricia Bender, Robert Bohn, Collette Broeders, Carrie Crow and John Greiner, Bill Davis, Joseph Farbrook, Lesley Flanigan, Adel Gorgy, Meredith Re' Grimsley, Industry of the Ordinary (Adam Brooks and Mathew Wilson), Marty Jonas, Patti Jordan, Meg Klim, Liz Lee (Lake View, So Yoon Lym, Claire Marcus, Christina Massey, Gail Morrison-Hall, Jen Pepper, Tristan Perich, Mary Pinto, Debra Ramsay, Susan Reedy, Rocco Scary, Karen Shaw, Sam Smith, Jamie Marie Waelchli, Ken Weathersby, Mark Wojcik, Jing Zhou, Sue Zwick
VISUAL PHRASING is part of a four-part project combining art, music, dance and poetry collectively called THE PHRASE IN ART.
It is funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery
College of Saint Elizabeth
2 Convent Road
Morristown, NJ 07960
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Artist Talk12/7/2010 Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Sarah Lawrence College Department of Art
A talk about painting by Ken Weathersby, with images.
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SEVEN - Miami11/10/2010
I'll be showing new paintings at SEVEN - Miami
with Pierogi Gallery Nov. 30 - Dec. 5, 2010.
SEVEN: Pierogi Gallery, Hales Gallery, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, BravinLee Programs, Postmasters Gallery, P.P.O.W and Winkleman Gallery in the Wynwood District, for art fair week in Miami.
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Curating10/22/2010
But Not Tonight, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, Enamel on acrylic panel, 2 parts, 8” x 17”
Summit, NJ-- The Kent Place Gallery will present an exhibition of art by Jeffrey Cortland Jones from Friday, October 22 – Friday, November 19, 2010. There will be a reception at the gallery from 6-8 pm on Friday, October 22.
Jones’ paintings at Kent Place will be a new body of work, all dated 2010. These new abstractions display a powerfully refined language of material, surface and gesture. The artist works on relatively small sheets of smooth and reflective plexiglass. He applies enamel paint to cover, edge, mark or blur the surfaces. By doing so, he continually unfolds a multiplicity of expression and play within a rigorous and serious vein of abstract painting.
In describing his own thoughts about his paintings, Jones offers the following: “Painting is simply: obsessive, correcting, locating, apprehending, pigment, fog, field, continuous, resistance.” This list suggests Jones’ intense interest in the processes of making the work.
Pairs of Jones’ painted panels are exhibited together as one artwork. Presenting a painting in two parts, setting its parts side by side as a diptych, has a long history in western painting, and may bring up ideas of contrasting opposites, such as in Medieval parallel depictions of heaven and hell. Closer to our time, Jones’ two-panel pieces here might recall minimal artworks by Donald Judd (an artist who also used plexiglass), artworks which, like these, juxtaposed carefully weighted doses of similarity and difference in similar repeated units to great effect.
According to gallery director Ken Weathersby, “There is an exciting dynamic in these works between transparency, translucency and opacity. Partly through the development of that dynamic, there is an important, shifting balance between atmosphere and object. We tend to want to see through or into the space in paintings. That is part of what painting inherits from its past role as a window onto a fictional world. Jones’ paintings raise that history in a way with their use of a transparent and reflecting surface. But, then again, our view is obscured, our attention is brought to the fact of the material, of the object. We feel we are getting a partial view, maybe a glimpse, like a quick look out the window of a fast moving car, but we never see more than what we could touch.”
Jeffrey Cortland Jones is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Dayton, in Dayton Ohio. He has exhibited widely. His recent exhibitions include solo shows in Oakland, CA (Some Walls, 2009), Indianapolis, IN (Christopher West Presents, 2010), and many group shows nationally and internationally including shows in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Buenos Aires, and Berlin.
Kent Place Gallery is on the campus of Kent Place School, 42 Norwood Avenue, Summit, NJ. Gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. For more information call (908) 273-0900, or visit www.kentplace.org.
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Curating9/17/2010
Winter Beach, Polina Barskaya, watercolor on paper, 23" x 27"
Summit, NJ-- Kent Place Gallery will present an exhibition of art by Polina Barskaya from Wednesday, September 15 through Friday, October 8, 2010. There will be a reception for the artist from 6:00-8:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 23.
Barskaya’s exhibition will be comprised of expressive water color and ink paintings on paper, some quite large. Her subjects are individuals and groups of figures drawn from her experience between and within two cultures.
The artist has said, “I was born in Ukraine in 1984, which was still part of the Soviet Union. When I was 4 years old most of my family immigrated to the United States as political refugees… I grew up in Brighton Beach, a predominantly Russian-Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn… American television was a big influence on me. My reality was defined by Old World Soviet-Jewish mentality and New World American values and freedoms… I am exploring my own history.”
Barskaya’s paintings show the influence of expressionism, drawing emotions of pathos and intrigue, along with a bit of kitsch humor, from her sensitive, lush presentation of the bodies, clothing, faces and hands of her subjects. She also develops implications of narrative through the relationships played out within paintings, and through spatial compositions that are informed partly by her interest in film. She has taken a keen interest in the complexity of character and situation in the works of Godard, Fellini, Almodovar and Woody Allen. She has said, “…one goal I have is to be able to do what a filmmaker does, only with paint.”
The artist is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Pratt Institute. Her work has previously been included in group exhibitions at Laba Gallery, Steuben Gallery, The Water Street Gallery and Digital Sandbox Gallery, all in New York City.
Kent Place Gallery is on the campus of Kent Place School, 42 Norwood Avenue, Summit, NJ. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. For more information call (908) 273-0900.
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Upcoming Exhibitions9/6/2010 drawing 102 (detail), 2010
CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION
USM Museum of Art
Hattiesburg, MS
Oct. 21 - Nov. 20, 2010
AQUA ART FAIR
with Horse Trader Projects
Miami
Dec. 1 - 5, 2010
THERELY BARE
traveling show
curated by John Tallman and Ron Buffington
THERELY BARE@
AVA Gallery
30 Frazier Ave
Chattanooga, TN 37450
423-265-4282
January 14, 2011 – February 25, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, January 14,
5 to 8pm
THERELY BARE@
Zeitgeist Gallery
1819 21st Ave S
Nashville, TN 37212-3705
(615) 256-4805
March 3, 2011- April 2, 2011
Opening Reception: TBA
POSTCONCEPTUALISM: THE MALLEABLE OBJECT University of Maryland Stamp Gallery curated by Mark Cameron Boyd
March 7 - April 8, 2011
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Exhibition5/9/2010
PERFECT MISMATCH
Ken Weathersby solo show
Pierogi Gallery
May 28 - June 27, 2010
(reception May 28, 7 - 9 pm)
Pierogi is pleased to present the first New York exhibition of Ken Weathersby's paintings. These are paintings of intense, elegant grids of primary color that subtly invert expectations in a number of ways. While some of the carefully penciled and painted canvases simply display their colorful patterns, others, in whole or in part, are turned to face the wall. Several have cut-away sections, which have been replaced by fitted inset panels painted with grids that either mimic or contrast with the surrounding canvas. The exhibition also contains a number of two-sided paintings, which may be flipped and re-hung during the course of the show to expose a hidden view. Another painting is set flush within a carved-out hole and is situated within, rather than hung on, the surface of the gallery wall.
The paintings in the show are related in feeling to minimal and monochrome abstract painting, presenting color and materials matter-of-factly, but according to the artist they were also partly prompted by the work of 15th century Sienese painter Giovanni di Paolo: “Giovanni's works are full of contradictions, full of visual opulence but also of things withheld.”
Weathersby's paintings are simultaneously conceptual and visual. In his essay “Malleable Objects,” Washington DC area curator Mark Cameron Boyd has referred to Weathersby as a “post-conceptual artist”, one whose work “addresses missed theoretical opportunities inherent in object-making.” This exhibition as a whole and the individual works within it are oriented to create a visual play of optical experiences, but also a particular kind of mental or conceptual engagement. According to the artist, “Paintings are visual objects. Usually we think of the 'object' part as supporting the 'visual,' of the wooden stretcher and canvas as just being there to hold up the image that we are meant to see. But those two different aspects can play with or against each other to open other thoughts or yield different problems. When the painting not only presents, but also denies pleasure or information, it complicates things. It can require some deciphering. It must be held in the mind as well as seen.”
Ken Weathersby received an MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit. His work was recently included in The National Academy of Art Museum's 183rd Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art in New York and in Postconceptualism at Moderno in Washington, DC. His paintings were featured in the Mid-Atlantic edition of New American Paintings. He is the recipient of a Mid-Atlantic Arts / New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Painting.
PIEROGI
177 North 9th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
T. 718.599.2144
F. 718.599.1666
E. info@pierogi2000.com
www.pierogi2000.com
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Auction5/9/2010
157(j) will be part of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions' 2010 benefit auction, selected by David John Dick (of youhavebeenheresometime) along with art by these four other artists:
Matt Connors
Ian McDonald
William J. O'Brien
Ivan Terestchenko
Public viewing at LACE beginning May 7
Auction May 20, 2010
www.welcometolace.org/auction/
www.youhavebeenheresometime.blogspot.com
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Exhibition3/22/2010
CONTINUING COLOR ABSTRACTION
A group show curated by Rella Stuart-Hunt.
Exhibition: April 13 - May 8, 2010.
Reception: Thursday, April 15, 6 - 8 pm.
THE PAINTING CENTER has moved into its new space:
547 West 27th Street, NY, NY.
www.thepaintingcenter.org
212-343-1060
director@thepaintingcenter.org
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Curating2/16/2010
Crying (contemporary caveperson), Miyuki Tsushima, detail, overall 6” x 4”, 2008
SEE YOU THERE / Miyuki Tsushima at Kent Place Gallery
Summit,NJ -- The Kent Place Gallery will present an exhibition of art by Miyuki Tsushima from Friday, February 12 – Friday March 12, 2010. There will be a reception for the artist from 6-8 pm on Friday March 5.
Tsushima’s installation includes paintings, objects and printed images. The whole space of Kent Place gallery becomes the canvas for her work. Painted, drawn and found images of animals, shooting range targets, and humans, including Tsushima’s “contemporary caveperson” figures are placed together in scenes that suggest multiple stories and evoke emotion. The “contemporary caveperson” refers to an ongoing motif in Tsushima’s work, a set of fictional characters who struggle to come to terms with and survive the difficulties and complexities of the world.
According to Kent Place Gallery Director Ken Weathersby, Tsushima’s work is evocative on a number of levels. “In formal terms, her work ranges widely. One element of this is her very loose, gestural marking, which is expressive, and seems to describe a space or an atmosphere. At the same time and sometimes combined with this, there are beautiful, extremely delicately rendered small drawings and paintings, so sensitive, and also very controlled. And then there are found elements, including printed images like shooting range targets with the silhouettes of small animals. All of these elements work together. The installation as a whole raises thoughts about relationships and alienation, perspective and identity. The show makes room for emotional response and empathy, but in an open-ended way. This is a beautiful and thought-provoking exhibition.”
Miyuki Tsushima grew up in Tokyo and attended an all-girls high school. She currently lives and works in New York City. She holds an MFA in Fine Arts from The School of Visual Arts in New York, and a Bachelor of Law from Keio University in Tokyo. She is a recipient of the Aaron Siskind Memorial Award. She has exhibited her art in New York and internationally.
Kent Place Gallery is on the campus of Kent Place School, 42 Norwood Avenue, Summit, NJ. Gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. For more information call (908) 273-0900, or visit www.kentplace.org.
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Curating10/14/2009
Familiar Faces, the month of january, 2009 (installation view at Kent Place Gallery), HTML drawings by Chris Ashley
courtesy of George Lawson Gallery
“A FEW MONTHS” CHRIS ASHLEY AT KENT PLACE GALLERY
Summit, NJ -- Kent Place Gallery will present "A Few Months" an exhibition of new art by Chris Ashley, from Monday October 19 to Friday November 20. There will be a reception from 6 to 8 pm on Friday October 23.
Chris Ashley produces beautiful, jewel-like colored drawings. He creates a fresh drawing, each one a new and unique idea, every single day. His medium for this daily discipline is HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), a digital process not usually associated with fine art in the sense of traditional painting and drawing. Ashley’s work shows that it can be an ideal medium both for aesthetic delight as well as endless invention.
This ongoing string of artistic variations is made to exist primarily within a digital world, since HTML is native to the internet. For years now the drawings have been published daily on his blog, “Look, See—“ (http://looksee.chrisashley.net/), but for this exhibition at Kent Place Gallery, Ashley presents five months’ worth of carefully printed images of his HTML works, which will be displayed in the gallery grouped in five large blocks, one block on each wall of the gallery, like five calendars. This provides the chance to see the images simultaneously, note the evolution of Ashley’s ideas, and compare work produced at different times.
According to gallery director Ken Weathersby, “Ashley is also a fantastic abstract painter in the traditional sense (with paint on canvas), and knows art history and contemporary art. His work with HTML is so interesting and such a unique project. I’m very excited to have it here at Kent Place Gallery. He has been working with this somewhat unusual medium for many years now, and in a totally focused way. Even though one might think that HTML presents only certain limited variables, Chris produces seemingly infinite surprises. I began visiting his blog daily some time ago and was often moved to leave comments on particular works. When I selected the five months that appear here at Kent Place Gallery, I chose a range that I think displays that quality of the unexpected that I find in his art. For example, one of the months uses vintage photographs as a jumping-off point, bringing in an aspect of collage, and with a fantastic visual humor. Another one deals with invented caricatures of human faces in a way that touches on ideas of cartooning, of masks, of the grotesque, and also of Picasso and cubism. Chris is just very knowledgeable and wise about the history of image-making, of the long traditions of painting and drawing, and it shows in these witty and resonant digital pieces.”
Chris Ashley lives, makes art and teaches in Oakland, California. He has exhibited widely and frequently—his recent and upcoming shows include exhibitions at George Lawson Gallery in San Francisco, Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley, Rhizome at the New Museum, Semantics Gallery in Cincinnati and the Marx Gallery in Covington, Kentucky. His artwork appears here courtesy of George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, California.
Kent Place Gallery is on the campus of Kent Place School, 42 Norwood Avenue, Summit, NJ. Gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. For more information call (908) 273-0900, or visit www.kentplace.org.
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Exhibition8/19/2009
165 (wky - detail), 2009
THE REVERSE SIDE ALSO HAS A REVERSE SIDE
Ken Weathersby - Exhibition
Summit, NJ -- Kent Place Gallery will present an exhibition of new paintings by Ken Weathersby from Thursday, September 10, to Friday, October 9. There will be an artist’s reception from 6 to 8 pm on Thursday, September 10.
Kent Place Gallery
at Kent Place School
42 Norwood Avenue
Summit, NJ 07902 - 0308
Hours: Monday - Friday, 9am to 4pm
Phone: 908.273.0900
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Exhibition7/6/2009 The Grid
August 19 - October 17, 2009
MP5³ - Milepost 5, 900 NE 81st Avenue, Portland, Oregon.
Opening reception: August 22, 7-9pm
Closing reception: October 17, 7-9pm
A group show curated by TJ Norris.
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Exhibition4/8/2009
162(nfc - detail), 2008
Postconceptualism (curated by Mark Cameron Boyd and Fernando Batista), in connection with International Art Affairs.
Thursday April 30 through Saturday May 9, 2009 at Moderno, Washington, DC.
Reception: Friday, May 1 from 6-9pm.
“Postconceptualism” addresses art theory as posed by the original conceptual artists in a selection of contemporary works. Artists seen here approach significant issues of conceptualism through unique visions. Curators Boyd and Batista believe this exhibition presents individuals whose work extends conceptual art and continues its impact as Postconceptualism…
… Ken Weathersby’s paintings reveal the disregarded space behind a painting’s support in two-sided paintings which require a deciphering experience to perceive them…"
exhibition site:
Moderno
1939 12th Street NW,
Washington, DC, 20009.
Tel: 202.239.5819
Blog: www.theorynow.blogspot.com
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Exhibition1/16/2009
157(J - detail, verso), 2008
New Jersey State Council on the Arts 2007-2008 Visual Arts Fellowship Exhibition.
April 10 through June 5, 2009 at Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ.
Reception: Friday, April 24 from 6-8pm.
There is a catalogue for this exhibition.
Visual Arts Center of New Jersey
68 Elm Street
Summit, NJ 07901
Tel: 908. 273.9121
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Dialogue10/31/2008
160 (detail--160 is invisible in this view), 2008
"Giddy Construction"
Brent Hallard, an Australian artist who currently lives and works in Tokyo, prompted a discussion about paintings 147 and 160. Read it in full at Visual Discrepancies. Click the image above to go there.
Hallard: "...I wanted to know how these giddy surfaces were constructed. Plus I was interested in the cut-a-way, the replace, and the sometimes hidden—the strategies and things that muck with the head as much as they do with the work and the reading..."
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Artist Talk10/26/2008
"Musical" Painting (detail), ca.1989, Ken Weathersby
Tuesday November 11, 6-7pm
101 Recitation Hall
University of Delaware Department of Art
A talk about painting by Ken Weathersby, showing images and mapping some preoccupations, including fields, mazes, minigrids, and turnarounds.
This presentation is free and open to the public.
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Exhibition10/23/2008
147 (detail), 2006
Korus Project, A group exhibition.
November 7 through November 20, 2008 at Korus House in Washington, DC. Reception November 7, 6-8pm.
November 21 through December 3 at the Hun Gallery in New York. Reception November 21, 6-8pm.
The Hun Gallery is at 12 West 32nd St., 3rd Floor, NY, NY 10001
tel. 212.594.1312
hungallery.org
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Exhibition8/26/2008 Maze 1 (detail), 1999, Ken Weathersby
Calculating Art: Mathematics in the Visual Field, on view from September 4 through October 8, 2008.
Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery at the College of Saint Elizabeth, 2 Convent Road, Morristown, NJ 07960
Opening reception: Thursday, September 4th, 4:30 to 7pm in the Maloney Art Gallery.
A group show curated by Dr. Virginia Butera.
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Art for Obama8/17/2008 For All, transparent film, paint, wood, paper, available light, 2008, Michele Alpern (photo by kw)
MoveOn.org Political Action and Obey Giant are offering artists a chance to show at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. The call is for any 2D or 3D creation that exemplifies the positive vision of Obama's campaign. (Good luck competing with the beautiful entry above.) The deadline is 11:59 a.m. EDT on August 18, 2008. The top five pieces, as determined by MoveOn's independent panel of judges (Shepard Fairey, Moby, Thurston Moore, Nancy Spector, DJ Spooky, Cydney Payton, Ross Bleckner, April Gornik, Eric Fischl and Laura Dawn) will be shown at the Manifest Hope Gallery show at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. The top 30 pieces will be auctioned on eBay with proceeds going to progressive causes.
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Artist-on-Artist Action7/2/2008
157(J - detail), 2008
J.T. Kirkland's new project at Thinking About Art.
Ken Weathersby (and a number of other artists) review each other's art. The works and and the words began posting the week of July 7. Click the image above to see the review of 157(J).
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Publication3/26/2008
New American Paintings #75 2008 Mid-Atlantic Edition features KW paintings 150 and 153 (murder of abel).
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Exhibition 3/23/2008
The National Academy Museum's 183rd Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art, on view from May 29 through September 7, 2008.
From the museum's press release:
"A two-sided painting construction by Ken Weathersby offers subtle changes in form, from one side to the other, as the hidden surface is revealed to the viewer."
"This Annual consists of exceptional contemporary works by newly emerging artists and established artists. The annual invitational exhibition offers an opportunity to the public to preview new artistic directions in contemporary American art. Included in this exhibition are artists Jose Bedia, Leonardo Drew, Ming Fay, Maria Elena Gonzalez, Steven Holl, Ben LaRocco, David Reed, David Row, Sean Scully, Barbara Takenaga, Don Voisine, James Wines, Betty Woodman and many others. Selections were made from over four-hundred recommended artists submitted for consideration and chosen by a curatorial committee comprised of a panel of seven prominent National Academicians.
A catalogue documenting trends, process, and media explored by the artists who are participating accompanies this exhibition. Written by art historian and Artist Membership Director, Nancy Malloy, this important resource includes an introduction by the Academy's President, Susan Shatter.
A separate awards committee of National Academician's will also give away over $100,000 in prizes."
The National Academy Museum: 1083 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128, Tel: 212.369.4880
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Fellowship2/15/2008
Ken Weathersby awarded 2008 Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation / NJ State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Painting.
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Interview (in Luna Park Review, archived winter 2008 issue)1/16/2008
Hootenanny Number One, 1994-- cover by Ken Weathersby.
RE: HOOTENANNY
Founding editors David Keith and Ken Weathersby talk about the unique, handbound literary and artists' journal that brought together a large and strange assortment of visual artists, poets, cartoonists, scientists, novelists and others. In the mid-90's Hootenanny could be found in the Whitney and Guggenheim museum stores and bookstores around New York as well as stores in Paris, Boston and a few other cities. Luna Park's interview traces the short history of Hootenanny.
Published to coincide with the launch of Luna Park Review's new web site,
www.lunaparkreview.com
January 31, 2008.
Ken Weathersby is also the featured visual artist for this quarterly issue of Luna Park.
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Curating12/13/2007
Installation view--three works by Jeremy Dyer.
AGAINST NATURE AT KENT PLACE GALLERY
Summit, NJ -- The Kent Place Gallery will exhibit recent art by ten professional artists whose works address aspects of conflict between humans and the rest of nature. The exhibition, titled "Against Nature," was curated by gallery director Ken Weathersby and will be on display from January 10 to February 6, 2008.
The works in the show range from photographs by Jeremy Dyer, which capture a dark, anxious sense of landscape, to paintings by Jonathan Allen that superimpose human interventions, adventures and errors in layers upon colorful fields.
Jesse Patrick Martin's drawings evoke dazzling and beautiful, but monstrously hybrid, forms. They seem to be composed of mineral, plant and possibly animal parts and imply our contemporary concerns with genetic engineering, as well as harking back to images in J. K. Huysmans' decadent French novel, Against Nature. Huysmans' literary work was one inspiration for the exhibition. According to Weathersby, "In the novel, the protagonist is in pursuit of the artificial in all experience. He is rebelling against everything that is considered natural. He develops a preference, which he avidly pursues, first for artificial flowers, and then, when that interest becomes exhausted, for real flowers that are so strange that they seem artificial. In all cases, he believes that ordinary nature is inferior. The horror of nature and the sentimental love of nature, both of which Huysmans' book address, run through modern culture and have surfaced in many forms. We find ourselves now in a time when, because of global warming and many other concerns, these issues emerge in a new way. This exhibition is intended to address that fact."
Delicate beauty is also represented in the exhibition in photographs by Miwa Koizumi. Her images of translucent, floating creatures become tempered with irony when one realizes that the "creatures" are fashioned from bits of plastic bottles and other litter.
Ernest Concepcion's large drawing "A Desire for Conflict (or how I managed to transform myself and stay the same)" evokes a frantic sense of conflict in a field populated with a multitude of clashing figures, while Peter Jacobs' richly textured painting "Marching to Extinction" gestures toward the final and only known evolutionary end-point for all species, including our own.
Both Adam Grossi and Amie Robinson locate a front line of conflict closer to home. Robinson's painting imagines animals mysteriously placed and acting within the space of an ordinary house in "Salvaging What Is Left". The houses and water symbols in Grossi's painting "Precipitation Zone" seem to raise issues of sprawl, the suburbs and ground water.
Michael Wyshock's video "Waterbang" is a poetic, psychedelically patterned, constantly looping work that layers real-world imagery and movement. It is a study in building intensity and complication.
Steve Jarvis' "Ark II Project" suggests (and plans for) a radical solution to our troubled relationship with our planet. The diagrams and documents he displays prepare for saving whatever animals survive our self-destruction as humans, and include drawings of protective suits tailored for chimpanzees and other creatures.
An artist's reception will be held Friday, January 18 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. in the gallery. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public. The Kent Place Gallery, located in Summit on the campus of Kent Place School, is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, or by appointment with Ken Weathersby, Director. For more information please visit www.kentplace.org. Jonathan Allen's work seen in this exhibition was supported by grants by the George Sugarman Foundation and the Puffin Foundation
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