Three openings at Real Art Ways' Creative Cocktail Hour Thursday night

Real Art Ways
56 Arbor St., Hartford, (860) 232-1006
Creative Cocktail Hour
Thurs., May 15, 6—10 p.m.

Press release

Real Art Ways' Third Thursday event features the openings of three new solo exhibitions. There is a $10 Cover for Creative Cocktail Hour, $5 for Members (FREE to Members who joined before 9/20/07).

In the Real Room, Sam Gibbons' candy-colored, symmetrical cartoon-like paintings come on with the subtlety of Yosemite Sam, but look closer and the abstract details emerge.

In the main gallery, we present solo exhibitions by two of our GO! Open Call selectees: Gautam Kansara and WonJung Choi. Kansara's videos focus on changing hierarchies and role reversals within a family; to the opposite effect, Choi's installation illustrates her need for structure and stability.

Sam Gibbons' paintings are fascinating renderings of cartoons perversely entwined in spasms of death and candy-colored imitations of sex. Gibbons' work is a painterly convergence of figuration and abstraction; resembling a Rorschach test, one side of the canvas mirrors the other, lending symmetry and precision to fluid and spontaneous bursts of color and form. Employing imagery that was originally intended to entertain and pacify, Gibbons' paintings are at war within themselves. The typical role of the cartoon is subverted; these benchmarks of inexperience are engaged in violent and sexual acts. Acting as allegories for the loss of innocence, Sam Gibbons' paintings exist as a complex and beautiful mimicry of the human condition.

Gautam Kansara's videos focus on his own family dynamic. Using candid footage of his family, and centering on their conversations, he offers an intimate look at their private lives, especially as their hierarchies change and roles reverse because of aging and caretaking needs.

WonJung Choi's installation reflects an ongoing search for certainty and stability as she adapts from Eastern to Western culture, from childhood to adulthood. Her images of bones are metaphorical for the structure and form she seeks.

"I am caught between transparency and depth," says Choi, "always shifting and changing like shadow and light."