Hera Gallery is pleased to present “Essential
Elements”, a national juried exhibition with works selected
by Judith Tolnick, director URI Gallery. The exhibition will
be on view from July 14th-August 18th with an opening reception
Saturday, July 14th from 6-8pm.
What are essential elements in artmaking?
This deceptively simple question is one that elicited a
wide range of responses to Hera Gallery’s current show,
"Essential Elements". Though many chose to interpret
essential to mean a fundamental sense of form, shape and
color, this vibrant exhibition pushes aside traditional concepts
to make way for personal interpretation.
Juror Judith
Tolnick selected work
that explores the artists' perception of "essential elements"
within their own conceptual framework. In her juror's statement
she writes, "[t]he exhibition theme moves away from any
connotations of 'essentialist' aesthetics and engages instead
the vital, fundamental, core structures that occupy different
artists variously and to distinctive ends." As Tolnick
tucks away any pre-determined ideas of the term "essential",
the result is a colorful cacophony of paintings, sculptures,
prints and photos.
These 40 works submitted by artists
from New York to Nebraska, often emphasize abstract interpretations
of natural elements such as pods, trees, figures, and
landscapes, investigating human relationships to nature,
place and object. Painting is a popular medium of expression
in "Essential Elements", appearing in various forms
from non-representational color patterning to quasi-representational,
imagined environments, to re-creations of actual landscapes.
Recent RISD graduate, and RI
resident, Beata Stepien-Liu,
presents brightly colored linear abstractions that vibrate
with tangible force. Inspired by
the work of abstract painters such as Mark Rothko and Brice
Marden, she describes her work as an, " …[exploration
of] all possible interconnected relations between essential
elements such as line, light, and color."
Left: Beata Stepien-Liu. "Composition 2".
Mixed media on paper. 2007. 12"x12"
Fellow painter, Julie Vinette of Massachusetts, presents hazily representational
works brimming with vibrant color and strong, painterly
movement. She writes, " [m]y work is impacted by the luminosity
and colors that suffuse each season, the transparency
and reflections of light and liquid, and the striations
that appear when speeding by…".
Right: Julie Vinette."Sixteen Skies".
Oil, encaustic on canvas. 2007. 48x36
Left: Kerry St. Laurent . "Aspen Grove,
Dixie National Forest".
Mixed media. 2007. 10"x10"
Kerry
St. Laurent is also inspired by her relationship
to nature. She is a Massachusetts painter whose
work leads the viewer on fantastic wanderings through real
and imagined landscapes.
About her process she writes," I
begin my paintings with fluid watercolor washes on smooth
Clayboard panels or Yupo paper that act as a metaphor for
my encounters with nature: spontaneous, organic, and unique.
These washes are integrated with layers of paint, ink, and
pencil that represent my ingrained influences as I reference
maps, guidebooks, scientific texts, photographs, and my
memory."
Michael
Reedy, Assistant professor in Drawing at Eastern Michigan
University,
finds inspiration in the complexities of human nature, utilizing
the figure in imagery, as well as referencing the presence
of an individual. Reedy presents a large,
intimately detailed, and emotionally packed portrait of a
naked man sitting cross-legged, while cartoon figures, and
rendered guns push forward from the shadowy background. Reedy
writes, "[u]ltimately, I wish the work to question our perceptions,
our hopes and fears, and reflect what it is to be human."
Right: Michael Reedy. "Super
Me".
Mixed
media on paper. 2006. 43"x34"
Left: Ayumi Ishii. "Anicca". Resin. 2005.
34"x29"x24"
Recent RISD graduate Ayumi
Ishii explores similar issues in her sculpture for
this exhibition, presenting an amorphous shaped resin sculpture,
familiar yet indefinable. Using subtle physical references,
Ishii begins a conversation about objects evoking human
experience.
About her work she writes, "By skewing
our perception of the human body, I look for experiences
that build and collapse the boundary between reality and
imagination."
Hera Gallery's "Essential Elements",
presents a lively and thought-provoking exhibition that inquires
into what is or may be essential for today’s contemporary
artist. |
