901 - MILES FROM NORMAL
George Barecca, Sam Buchanan, Lexie Bragg, Megan Coonelly,
CJ Davis, Emma Farber, Chris Hagen, m. jo hart, Gina Hunt, Venise Keys, Jeremy
Lampe, Laura Newman, Krista G Profitt, Stoney Sasser, Dylan Welch, Micah
Zavacky
February 12th - 15th, 2015
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 12th, 7-9pm
Viewing hours: Fri-Sun 1-6 and by appointment
“901 - MILES FROM NORMAL” features a selection of works by
promising MFA students from Illinois State University’s School of Art. 901 is
the number of miles between New York City and Normal, Illinois, where the
University is located. Included are distinctive works from the realms of
painting, installation, photography, ceramics, glass and prints. This exhibition marks the first time
the artists have exhibited in NYC and it offers them a chance to receive
critical response to their artwork.
George Barreca draws with slabs of clay that are
spontaneously cut and attached to construct functional pots. This direct way of
working and his application of loosely brushed, lush colors allow for
improvisation and captures a sense of immediacy.
Capturing elaborately staged narratives, Lexie Bragg
examines the in-between moments of our lives; how our stories happen even when
we aren’t ready, and the human need for reason and story telling.
Sam Buchanan’s manipulated paper wall pieces explore the
dynamics of neglect and repair, harm and amendment. This exploration manifests
in several ways: as woven sheets of previously cut and sagging paper; as
stoppers in a broken surface; as padded and stuffed paper.
Relying on childhood images as means for a self-portraiture,
Megan Coonelly recalls the awkwardness of childhood and adolescence. Through her manipulation of paint, the
desire to form an identity becomes warped and unidentifiable.
Continuing a long-standing interest in labor and its various
levels of intersectionality, CJ Davis' photographs investigate the role of
women's employment in the service and care industries. Through the lens of
gender, she is looking to create images that explore the feminized nature of
these fields while giving voice to the diversity of real-world worker
experiences.
Emma Farber's approach to contemporary abstraction involves
passages culled from autobiographical moments captured in acrylic and oil
paint. Her ideas include shifts in visual and mental perception and space as it
exists in regard to mood/human emotion.
Chris Hagen's prints and experimental books act upon a range
of communal expectations to explore how we take the world in, how we share it
with others, how we try to hold on to fleeting aspects of it, and how we
reconsider them in hindsight.
m. jo hart creates female figures out of clay which depict
ordinary moments that occur throughout the day. Her objective is to translate the mundane moments of
everyday life into quiet, thought-provoking work.
An obsessive fascination with impermanent phenomena is
manifest materially in Gina Hunt’s paintings that explore color and light with
sprayed paint on cut canvas. Hunt offers simultaneous experiences based in
interwoven patterns and color.
Each of Venise Keys’s paintings is more determined than the
last to capture the emotion of the black female experience and challenge how
abstraction can communicate blackness. Her paintings do not contain power
fists, Afros, or black bodies but they are about all of those things.
Jeremy Lampe's glass sculptures are dynamic animated works
that reference movement and dichotomies between people and their surroundings.
He wants to reveal evidence that the works were soft and malleable before the
annealing process as a way of showcasing the unique characteristics of glass.
By combining steel and raw, cracked, fired clay, Laura
Newman makes abstract sculptures that draw conceptual focus from the ways these
materials work together to create forms that are both strong and fragile. This
contrast can be related to many things in our modern society, ranging from the
construction and eventual decline of cities, to expectations of gender roles.
The relationships that people form, whether new or long
standing, are the focus of Krista G Profitt’s oil on canvas paintings. Those
relationships are played out within the act of painting, which becomes a
narrative of her personal connection to the canvas.
Stoney Sasser builds playful, surreal and celebratory
installations, which mimic biological forms commonly manifested through the
material spinoffs of human commerce and production. She uses materials like
fabric, foam, yarn, plaster, acrylic and caulk to invite you into her
imaginative world of theatrics and intrigue.
Is it possible for a distinct material object to
simultaneously have more than one kind of physical identity? With a collection
of surrealist meditations on time and space, Oakland artist Dylan Welch
contemplates this question and in the process creates her own science of
whimsy.
Through direct observation and memory, Micah Zavacky creates
prints that refer to the landscape. He uses the landscape as a foundation for
his perceptual exploration of his subject matter, and his response to an image
as it develops.
The Front Room Gallery is located at 147 Roebling Street in
Williamsburg Brooklyn. Gallery hours are Friday-Sunday 1-6 PM and by
appointment. Press contact: Daniel Aycock 718-782-2556
