New exhibits open at Artspace this evening

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
Mark Mulroney: Wet with Glee
Gail Biederman: 2800/16/65/4100/35/1073/84B
Kwadwo Adae: Kwadrilaterals
David Borawski: Goes Around Comes Around
Steven Millar: Discovering Home
Jeremy Bell: Vestige: Genesis
Geoffrey Detrani: Break & Heap
Through Mar. 28, 2009
Opening Reception: Thurs., Feb. 19, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

Seven new exhibits will open at Artspace in New Haven this evening at 6 p.m. There will be artist talks by Gail Biederman and Steven Millar at 6:30 p.m.

Mark Mulroney: Wet with Glee • A prolific artist whose work defies easy categorization, Mark Mulroney borrows familiar imagery from popular culture and turns it on its head. In his newly commissioned installation for Gallery 1, Wet with Glee, Mulroney renders colorful images of people, places, and things in an illustrative, even cartoon-like, style. Though seemingly benign, Mulroney's fractured yet whimsical scenes speak tellingly about social and cultural taboos, while commenting on issues ranging from power and excess to anxiety and loss.

Gail Biederman: 2800/16/65/4100/35/1073/84B • Mapping and memory are integral to Gail Biederman's large-scale installations. Using simple materials such as felt and string, Biederman redefines the places that were once familiar to her by reconfiguring their spatial boundaries. Straight lines that once connected places on a map or street together now curve and zigzag in unlikely directions, charting new courses to old destinations.

Kwadwo Adae: Kwadrilaterals • In his vividly colored canvases, Kwadwo Adae breathes new life into the vernacular of abstract painting. Intertwining oppositional ideas such as linear and non-linear, and flatness with three-dimensionality, Adae attempts to plumb the depths of illusionistic space while balancing stability with chaos.

David Borawski: Goes Around Comes Around • In his mixed media installations, David Borawski creates perceptually engaging environments that question our societal and cultural values. In his new installation, Borawski uses video, painting, and sculpture to comment on the circular nature of conflict, endless war, and an ever-encroaching corporate law enforcement.

Steven Millar: Discovering Home • In his series of seventy-plus ink drawings, Steven Millar explores the nature of consumer culture through the romanticism of the suburban American home. Using imagery and text culled from home planning guides, Millar subverts the function of these advertisements. He re-fashions the images, adding new text that reveals the motivations and anxieties of the potential buyers.

Jeremy Bell: Vestige: Genesis • Using blueprint paper as his medium, Jeremy Bell explores the simple yet profound relationships that exist between art, science, and mathematics. In his highly detailed, drawings, Bell explores the connections that exist between bees, violins, and the universe that speak to notions of creation, transcendence, and death.

Geoffrey Detrani: Break & Heap • In his delicately layered pencil drawings, Detrani takes elements from the natural world and fuses them with our built environment. Merging the organic with the inorganic and the abstract with the figural, Detrani's imagined landscapes depict botanical forms blending with fence-like structures that hover in mid-air. Complete yet fragmentary, his ambiguous compositions speak quietly to notions of ephemerality and dislocation.