Ruth Phaneuf Fine Arts, 1061 Jackson Avenue, LIC, NY 11101 347.752.3309
“All in All”
Opening night: Friday, September 7th, 6–9 PM
Exhibition runs from Friday, September 7th to Sunday, October 14th, 2012.
Open, Friday to Sunday, 1–6 PM and by appointment.
Ruth Phaneuf Fine Arts is pleased to present “All in All” a group exhibition featuring works by Patrick Brennan, Alex Clark, Mai Hoftstad Gunnes, Jason Tomme, Eve K. Tremblay and Randy Wray.
“All in All” ponders the use of collage, its techniques and conceptual ramification in contemporary practice. The works exhibited cover a variety of media from painting, photography, sculpture, video, collage and assemblage. In 1912, Pablo Picasso attached a patterned piece of oilcloth to an oval shaped painting “Still Life with Chair Caning,” introducing a technique which became central to the vocabulary of modern art. The avant-garde and political character of early collage has given way to multiplicities of meanings intensified by materials and context. A hundred years later, the genre is ubiquitous: stylistically, it has permeated contemporary consciousness. From painting to YouTube mash-ups, the impulse to combine, sample, cut, and paste has become second nature to both artists and viewers. The works on view in “All in All” reveal diverse strategies of accumulation, allowing each found object and its juxtaposition to inform the next.
Patrick Brennan’s work reflects his commitment to abstraction. In “Babe,” 2012, the painting’s surface is build up of several layers of cut out shapes of vibrant Mylar colors, bits of fabric, Popsicle sticks. In areas where the stretcher bar is exposed, Brennan treats it as surface. A sense of experimentation and risk come through his process. Painting itself is investigated. Brennan also makes short iMovie videos from footage found on the Internet. “Cold Satellite,” 2012, a 4 min moving geometric collage, with music by JD Walsh, is on view. Brennan’s work was included in “Stretching Painting” at Lelong Gallery, a summer survey highlighting young painters in NYC.
These days, Alex Clark lives and works along Interstate 95. Old and new glossies provide him with source material while science fiction gives him a language. Alluding to Pop and advertising, Clark brands his own seductive worlds. In “Poolside at the New Model Home 2000,” 2012, the promise of an improved living lures consumers to a life of leisure, comfort and insouciance. Other work by Clark includes “Forgotten Heroes of the Natural History Museum,” a small box of heteroclite objects that hang from the ceiling.
Through 16mm film, installation and collage, Mai Hofstad Gunnes has developed an imagery based on a sort of associative logic, where different layers of reality are tested against each other. Her films and collages are often closely inter-connected whereas an early idea for a film is often developed through a process including collage. “Tête Royale” and “Fa” merge images from science magazines with images from a book on the collection of the Musée du Louvre in Paris.
In his photographic series “Bangkok Pedestal (Fuk Prefab TH),” 2012, Jason Tomme explores the idea of location and the possibility of the “blank slate.” An ongoing work spanning various locations, Tomme installs fabricated, portable pedestals to alter and investigate a site; in this case, the bedroom of an extended relative in central Bangkok. A new context is created from the in situ juxtaposition of the pedestal (as foreign object) and the existing space. The pedestal is either adorned with local objects, which takes on a minimally collaged or bric-à-brac appearance, or it is simply left empty, blank. In either case, the pedestal becomes “the stage” to frame or capture things that relate to time and presence, not just objects. Alternatively, this “stage” can be viewed as a mirror reflecting elements of both the site and the artist.
Eve K. Tremblay presents collages from her series “Sorry, it was a misunderstanding,” 2012. In these small vignettes, Sappho, the Ancient Greek poet, is confronted with image-fragments culled from Nature science magazines and Tremblay’s own photographs taken at the Met. The work is made out of cutout cardboard boxes that often bear a commercial stamp. A handwritten text by the artist confides to viewers a sense of the poetic. Executed with intuition and a Dadaist spirit, the group is titled ‘Statue with Passing Thoughts #1, #2 and #3.’ Imbued with subtle lyricism, the work carries Sappho to far-reaching places.
Randy Wray recycles and transforms the detritus of our castaway culture (junk mail, polystyrene packaging, discarded clothing and furniture) to explore ideas about alchemy and faith. His sculptures and assemblages integrate humble materials into conglomerations blending fragments of representational imagery with passages of material driven gesture. In “Hang,” 2011 and “Action Movie,” 2012, Wray joins pieces of his old sneakers and jeans with sticks and geodes in an intuitive manner. “Tableau,” 2012, is made from shredded waste paper, a paintbrush, and broken glass atop a found and altered folk art table. The works balance a number of seemingly polar opposite relationships: familiar/unknown; beauty/grotesquerie; natural/man-made; naïve/sophisticated, and reflect the incongruities he experienced growing up in the conservative evangelical Southern Baptist culture.
Autres nouvelles/ Other news: www.evektremblay.com
