IN-HABITAT
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Julia Whitney Barnes
Gregory Curry
Lisa DiLillo
Kim Holleman
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January 20-February 19th
Opening Friday, January 20th 7-9
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Front Room Gallery is proud to present, “In-Habitat” an exhibition of new works by: Julia Whitney Barnes, Gregory Curry, Lisa DiLillo, and Kim Holleman. In the exhibition “In-Habitat” each artist takes a unique perspective of the concept of habitat, and what it is to inhabit this world.
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Gregory Curry’s paintings relate his postulations of a post human environment inspired by and extrapolated from the various dynamic conditions now impacting on the human animal. The environments and entities that populate his paintings seem imbued with pure energy on a primordial level, set against a background of contrasting complimentary colors. Curry utilizes familiar modes of representation such as rendering, perspective and classic spatial relationships in a way that draws the viewers into these uncanny realms, relating our temporality within an environment of elemental particles and genetic materials.
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Lisa DiLillo creates nocturnal landscapes and still lives that engage luminosity as a visual correlation to nature's life force. The photographs depict a liminal state where subjects are transforming or are in the process of coming into being, reflecting on our evolving environment and on unusual climatic occurances. The intensity and incertitude of these photographs underscore the idea that the more we investigate nature the more mystifying and complex it becomes.
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Rooted simultaneously in science while evoking the fantastic, Julia Whitney Barnes creates works that reinterpret life and the natural environment. Her paintings explore the complex relationship and power struggles of humans with nature, and the contradictions in which our society gives life to and reveres nature while abusing and overlooking it. Her large scale oil painting depicting a tree house abstracted with layers transparencies and lush patches of color, transposes elements of the forest and individual trees with the interior panels of a the structure, relating her desire for a more balanced relationship with nature.
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Kim Holleman relates environmental issues of contamination of our natural resources, brought on by radioactive fallout, chemicals seeping into ground water, oil spills and the ephemera in our petro-chemical environment. She infers the impact of these elements and the increasing toll on our natural environment, presenting an installation of displays and scenes, colliding natural and artificial reality, both fantastical and frightening, into a curio collection gone awry. This faux-scientific archive shows us beautiful, sometimes-toxic parks, public spaces, visions of nostalgic environments and constructions straining towards natural growth, but spinning out of control, coated to saturation which threatens their very existence.
