Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
The Figure Eight
Figurative Metonymy
Feb. 9—Mar. 16, 2013.
Opening: Sat., Feb. 9, 6—8 p.m.
Artspace Press release
Two shows open at Artspace this Saturday night, Feb. 9:
The Figure Eight and
Figurative Metonymy. The opening reception will occur from 6—8 p.m.
The Figure Eight, organized by artist and Artspace Visual Arts Committee member
Kwadwo Adae, will run at Artspace from Feb. 9—March 16, 2013. In this exhibition, depictions of figuration encompass the continuum from the traditional to the abstract, the scientific to the animalistic, and address the historical as well as societal aspects of artistic relationships with the viewer. Each artist employs innovative approaches to the traditional concept of the figure in aspects of form, social commentary, and the willful transformation of materials. The exhibition will be supplemented with community programming to engage the general public in these questions of figuration. Weekly figure drawing classes with live models, free and open to the public in the gallery at Artspace, will span the duration of this exhibition.
About the Artists:
Sophia Wallace is an award-winning and critically acclaimed photographer who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In
Wallace's body of work titled
On Beauty she skillfully focuses attention on societal perceptions of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality by creating photographs of male models that objectify them in ways similar to the societally accepted practice of the objectification of women across artistic media.
Jaclyn Conley is a figurative painter who lives and works in New Haven, CT.
Conley's work is driven by fragments of jpeg images cultivated from the internet and explores the line between the human figure and animal figure, asking which aspects of human behavior are animalistic and what aspects of animalism are human in nature.
Gerri Davis (
Web) is a painter living and working in Manhattan, NY. In her series
Iteration she renders awe-inspiring, spatially perverse, monumentally sized figurative pieces in oil paint. These works are comprised of the exploration of staccato moments of time and space, echoing masterpieces of classical artistic expressions of portraiture.
Gaviero Umami is the moniker for the collaborative team of sculptors,
Eoin Burke and
Jim Dessicino. They live in New Haven, CT and work in Brooklyn, NY. They render innovative forms by utilizing aspects of the figure as a vehicle for the exploration of ideas, leading to conceptual creations of figurative entities that are simultaneously abjectly familiar and impossibly alien.
Gregory Santos, an artist who works predominantly in printmaking, lives and works in Manhattan, NY. In
Santos' body of work entitled
Movements, he explores and portrays intimate interpersonal relationships by reducing figurative form to the rudimentary building blocks of color, shape, size, and space. These simplified forms capture complex aspects of personality, mood, and the vibrancy of human gesture.
Ryan and
Trevor Oakes (
Web) are multidisciplinary, collaborative, twin artists living and working in Manhattan. In their series
Vision they explore fundamental aspects of visual perception by utilizing a special concave easel (specifically designed for the cranial measurements of these identical twins) with concave paper surfaces that are analogous to the spherical shape of the human eye. These masterful concave drawings take into account the technical aspects of the perception of the viewer to create surprisingly accurate freehand ink drawings of interior and exterior spaces.
About the Organizer:
Kwadwo Adae is an award-winning abstract painter, teacher, and member of the Visual Arts Committee, Artspace’s peer review artist board.
Adae is the founder of Adae Fine Art Academy, a small art school and studio dedicated to providing individualized instruction in drawing and painting in the community through afterschool art programs, assisted living centers, and rest homes for the mentally ill. He holds a Masters in Art from New York University.
•••
Figurative Metonymy is the first to be organized at Artspace by the University of Connecticut's Advanced Photography Class, led by professor
Cara Vickers-Kane (
Web). Metonymy, a linguistic device used in rhetoric in which one thing is named or referred to by the name of another, forms the thesis of this show. The exhibition features five artists whose images coalesce to form a pictorial response to the work in the surrounding space. Learn more about the exhibition on the
Figurative Metonymy blog. Opening on February 9, 2013.
Participating artists are
Joan Fitzsimmons (
Web),
Carolyn Monastra (
Web),
Christopher Beauchamp (
Web),
Keith Johnson (
Web) and
David Coon (
Web).
Labels: Artspace, Cara Vickers-Kane, Carolyn Monastra, Christopher Beauchamp, David Coon, Gaviero Umami, Gerri Davis, Gregory Santos, Jaclyn Conley, Joan Fitzsimmons, Keith Johnson, Kwadwo Adae, Sophia Wallace
