Matthew Kolodziej's Paintings on View at Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech

 ARTISTS AND ARCHITECTURE: 

PROJECTION/CONVERGENCE/INTERSECTION 

James Casebere Amy Casey Dionisio González Candida Höfer 

Matthew Kolodziej Jean-François Rauzier Jennifer Williams 

This exhibition is supported in part by a gift from 

Dr. Charles Y. Davis and Mrs. Carole C. Davis. 

January 19–April 1, 2017 

All galleries

Given the pivotal role and great influence that architecture plays in the human experience, it is not surprising that some artists have found it to be a rich medium to probe—figuratively and thematically—as they explore and attempt to understand the world in which we live. In every society architecture has in some way reflected the ideals, practices, and beliefs of the people who live, work, and worship in the buildings of their towns and cities, and throughout history, the greatness of civilizations has to a significant extent been established by architectural achievements. As life in the 21^st century is increasingly centered in urban and metropolitan areas, the role of architecture and the architectural aesthetics of our homes, workplaces, and civic buildings assumes ever more importance. Architecture determines to a great degree what our visual experience is—what we see and what we are surrounded by in our daily lives. 

This exhibition features a selection of large-scale works by exemplary emerging artists, as well as some of the most acclaimed national and international artists of our times who inventively engage aspects of architecture in their creative endeavors. Spanning the practices of photography, painting, installation art, and works on paper, the artists in this exhibition project, converge, and/or intersect architectural images and ideas into visually arresting and conceptually layered works of art while addressing underlying issues of history, memory, and place.

Candida Höfer’s resplendent and breathtaking photographs delve into history, bringing into sharp focus architectural splendors of the past. Her magnificent interiors of grand libraries, palaces, opera houses, and theatres reference human achievement of the highest order, yet are devoid of human presence. Infused with this uncanny yet profound paradox, these extraordinarily works signify far more than literal representations of place.

James Casebere too speaks eloquently to history as well as to memory and place in his stunning large-scale photographs of Thomas Jefferson’s most acclaimed architectural achievement—Monticello. Casebere represents Jefferson’s interiors as gorgeous dreamlike spaces flooded with light and shimmering pools of water. But in a conceptual twist on both history and reality, what he portrays in these photographs is not real. These hauntingly beautiful works are created with table-top models that the artist builds, lights, and photographs, essentially reinventing and reconstructing Jefferson’s iconic architectural spaces. “Everything l photograph is a fabrication,” Casebere says. “There’s nothing ‘real’ in my work. I am interested in how photography creates and reconstructs reality.”

Amy Casey’s meticulously detailed acrylic paintings on paper or panel also “reconstruct” the built environment into wild representations of reality. Her fascination with cities and “urbanscapes” is conveyed in these works by surreal clusters of houses whirling in space, precariously suspended at the brink of impending disaster. Less concerned with phenomenology than Casebere, Casey’s depictions of a teetering, chaotic world elicit a very real socio-economic commentary on the uncertain state of affairs in 2009 during the midst of a recession and housing bust. In Hold On, a painting from 2016, elements are more firmly interconnected and bound together, conveying struggle but also resilience and endurance in the face of continuing and pervasive uncertainty.

Jean-François Rauzier’s monumental photographs, or “hyperphotos,” as he terms them, are gigantic, hyper-realistic photographic reconstructions of architectural locations, ranging from the galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to the halls of Versailles, France. Taken from multiple angles and distances, each of his compositions is made up of hundreds and often thousands of digitally composed and reconstructed images with unusually high resolutions. What this achieves is a visual language of extraordinary detail that allows the viewer to zoom in on the most minute details in the midst of vast scale. Compounding the complexity of these works is how the artist juxtaposes, duplicates, and manipulates images to create “hyper-real” architectural fantasies where the real and unreal collide.

Amy Casey

More elusive and steeped in richly tactile, almost viscous surfaces are Matthew Kolodziej’s abstract canvases. His paintings are initially based on his perceptions and documentation of actual archeological and/or architectural sites that he photographs, renders into computer drawings, reconstructs conflating multiple points of view, and then projects onto canvas as a foundation for thick, densely layered paintings. The results are a complexity of tenuous, ever-shifting spatial perspectives that seem to alternate between expansion and contraction, creation and destruction, stability and chaos. In these mesmerizing paintings Kolodziej explores the archaeology and architecture of space, metaphorically probing sites of construction, demolition, transition, and catalytic change.

Realistically depicted and anchored in specific locations are Dionisio González’s stunning panoramic vistas of Vietnam’s Halong Bay in the Gulf of Tonkin. Situated along the spectacular coastline in northern Vietnam, this formerly isolated geographic area is inhabited mainly by impoverished,once secluded people living in houseboats on the water. González captures the extraordinary beauty of this area in expansive digital photographs, into which he interjects imaginary modern and contemporary architectural structures. Likewise, in the Brazilian slums of González’s Favela (2004-2007)series the artist creates the same kind of hypothetical intervention, digitally reconstructing photographic space to comment on the significance of place, social inequities, the collision of global cultures, or, as the artist suggests, a reimagining of possibilities or future utopias.

This projection, convergence, and intersection of architectural images into alternate pictorial realities also characterizes Jennifer William’s site-specific photographic installation, Blacksburg Unfurled (2016-2017). Created specifically for this exhibition and based on the history, architecture, and community of Blacksburg, this 120-foot long mural installation is composed with hundreds of photographs that the artist took of architectural sites and historic locations in town. She then digitally altered, reconstructed, and composed the architectural images into a dynamic photomontage printed on Photo-tex in a wildly imaginative reconfiguration of the built environment that speaks to history, memory, and place.

By incorporating architectural images and ideas in their work, the artists in this exhibition, from James Casebere to Jennifer Williams, engage in collapsing real and fictive imagery, and in so doing, uncover a depth of ideas and perspectives about our world, both past and present. Large in scale and visually seductive, their art takes the intersection of architecture and life as a platform to explore, ponder, and heighten awareness of a variety of ways that architecture and the built environment impact the human experience. 

Margo Ann Crutchfield

Curator at Large

Three New Exhibitions Opening at Carl Solway Gallery

Opening Friday, February 3rd, 2017 Catherine Richards Eva Kwong Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson February 3 – April 29, 2017 Reception 5:00-8:00pm All three artists will be present Catherine Richards Capricious Alignment New Works Perceptual Screen w.w. 2017 Painted Aluminum 7 x 8 feet Capricious Alignment V in blue orchid   2017 Digital textile on cotton 10 x 8 feet Catherine Elizabeth Richards is an architect and visual artist. Her work expands the understanding of architecture at different scales; from discrete objects, sculpture and installations to city-wide interventions. Richards works between mediums, exploring architecture and perception with materials, experimental photography and video. Her installation for Carl Solway Gallery, Capricious Alignment, features immersive textile prints and polychrome aluminum sculptures. In her words, ”Order, decoration, and color create a dynamic psychology of space. The viewer’s perceptual experience is heightened by the sequential nature of both the tapestries and open grid structures. The juxtaposition of repeating floral environments alongside minimalist sculpture opens a dialogue between notions of order and chaos. Boundaries between exterior and interior are rendered fluid and playful.” For example, her piece Valance draws upon the history of glass architecture. This lighted glass sculpture incorporates plant patterns etched directly into the surface. The viewer’s reflection merges with the transparent structure, itself a meditation on inside and outside. Her family’s farm in Michigan, a historic site where botanists developed hybrid species of apples and cherries, is largely responsible for her plant-based references. Valance was first shown in 2014 at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Richards holds Master of Architecture and Bachelor of Science degrees in Architecture from the University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning where she now teaches. She is a co-founder of the art collective Hark + Hark, with Anh Tran. Hark + Hark created an installation for Marchon Eyewear in New York City, that traveled to Paris, London, Berlin and Tokyo in 2016 and is now in the company’s permanent collection. Eva Kwong Love Between The Atoms Recent Ceramic Sculpture Arosso 2016 Stoneware, wheel-thrown, colored slips and underglazes 20.5 x 8 x 9 inches Eva Kwong’s exhibition of ceramics will include free-standing sculpture and sculptural wall installations made from many elements referencing biological sources such as bacteria, diatoms and cells. Smaller pieces reflect her personal interpretation of the traditional vase form. Working in the material of clay, Kwong explores a philosophical connection to the union of opposites. Her title, Love Between the Atoms, refers to the attraction between the protons and the electrons in an atom. In her words, “I see this attractive force as something that bonds us all together in this world. It is this attractive force which forms bonds at the subatomic level that makes things work in the physical world that we experience. It is this attractive force that enables us to build forms with clay and to draw people together and build relationships with each other. In many ways, mutual attraction of one form or another is what enables us to connect and create interactions on microcosmic as well as macrocosmic levels, from the physical to the emotional.” ”Maybe it is because I grew up with both eastern and western cultures. I was brought up with the traditional Chinese concept of yin and yang that underlies all life forms and energies. Growing up in Hong Kong and New York, I learned to look at everything through the lens of both cultures.” Eva Kwong’s work is included in numerous collections internationally including the Cranbrook Museum of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Finnish Craft Museum, Helsinki, Finland; Janet Mansfield Collection, Mansfield Ceramics, Gulgong, Australia; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; Shigaraki Park Ceramic Museum, Shigaraki, Japan and Fule International Ceramic Art Museums, Fuping, China. Kwong received an MFA in Ceramics and Drawing from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University in 1977 and a BFA in Ceramics and Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1975. Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson Based on a Photograph New Woven Works Based on a Photo, Medium #5 2017 Silk, industrial dyes 46 x 47 inches References to the macrocosms and microcosms of the natural world abound in the woven paintings of Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson. Painting on silk threads in a process related to ikat, her imagery is loosely based on landscape photographs of her native Iceland. The sources are often close-up images of lichen, but they also abstractly allude to larger swaths of land and sky. By painting with industrial dyes on the detached warp (vertical) threads of her works, attaching these dyed threads to a large-scale loom and weaving in the weft (horizontal) threads, she creates slightly off register, shimmering woven paintings that suggest expansive space rather than any literal sense of place. Jonsson has received numerous grants, commissions and awards including The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2015 Award, the Cleveland Art Prize in 2008, four fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and a public commission from the Hilton Hotel Convention Center, Cleveland in 2016. Her work is included in many collections such as The Cleveland Art Museum, Reykjavik Art Museum, Akron Art Museum, Progressive Insurance Collection and Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Solo shows include Tibor De Nagy Gallery, New York; TANG Museum, Saratoga, New York; Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland; and MOCA Cleveland. She was also included in the 2015 group exhibition, Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University. Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1963 and still maintains a home there. She resides in Cleveland, Ohio for much of the year and makes annual visits to Iceland to gather more source material for her paintings. She received MFA and BFA degrees from Kent State University in 1995 and 1991 respectively. She earlier studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art and the architecture program of Kent State University.

Hours: Monday – Friday 9:00 – 5:00 pm / Saturday 12:00 – 5:00 pm / tel. 513.621.0069 Carl Solway Gallery 424 Findlay Street Cincinnati, OH 45214

Alan Rath Exhibition Review in Aeqai

Susan Byrnes reviewed the exhibition, ALAN RATH: New Sculpture, in the December issue of Aeqai.

http://aeqai.com/main/2016/12/human-as-content-alan-rath-at-carl-solway/

Paul Laffoley at Andrew Edlin Gallery

PAUL LAFFOLEY's paintings, The Life and Death of Elvis Presley: A Suite, 1988-1995, a group of eight paintings with velvet drapes, is on view at Andrew Edlin Gallery.   Seriously featuring: Thornton Dial, Ralph Fasanella, Jill Freedman,  Paul Laffoley, Soviet Propaganda Posters, George Widener November 4 - December 11, 2016 Reception: Friday, November 4, 6 - 8pm View press release here Click here for more info Andrew Edlin Gallery   212 Bowery   New York, NY 10012 T 212-206-9723 F 212-206-9639   Info@edlingallery.com Wednesday to Saturday: 10:00 am to 6:00pm Sunday: 12pm to 6pm

Andrew Edlin Gallery, 212 Bowery, New York, NY 10012

Fall Exhibitions Open at Carl Solway Gallery on September 9th

Alan Rath New Sculpture Duane Michals Sequences, Tintypes and Talking Pictures Opening Reception September 9, 2016, 5:00-8:00pm Exhibitions continue through December 23, 2016 Duane Michals Lecture October 25, 7:00pm, Cincinnati Art Museum.  This event is co-sponsored by Carl Solway Gallery and the Friends of Photography at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Alan Rath New Sculpture Alan Rath’s kinetic sculptures poetically integrate the human and the technological. Many incorporate computer-animated still images of human features, such as eyes, mouths and hands, displayed on LCD screens. These screens are mounted on sculptural armatures and the images are programmed to change in subtle progressive permutations. The screen images often appear to be involved in some form of communication. Alan Rath, Bostock, 2012 Aluminum, FR-4, polyethylene, delrin, custom electronics, LCDs, 81 x 45 x 33 inches Alan Rath, Walleye X, 2011 Aluminum, FR-4, PVC, custom electronics, LCD, 78 x 28 x 16 inches Duane Michals Sequences, Tintypes and Talking Pictures Duane Michals is best known for staged photographic sequences incorporating handwritten text created in the 1960s and 1970s. Provocatively breaking away from the established photographic tradition of highlighting powerful single images, his small, black and white photographs employ narrative sequencing to address metaphysical issues such as memory, mortality, love and loss. Duane Michals, The Journey of the Spirit After Death, 1971 (detail) © Duane Michals. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York In 2012 Michals began painting on tintype portraits. An historical process from the Civil War era, tintypes are photographs printed on thin metal sheets. In this work, he combines painting and photography, 19th century portraiture with 20th century Modernist references. The exhibition will include nine of the painted tintypes and several recent films, Talking Pictures. Duane Michals, The Red Head, 2013, tintype with hand-applied oil paint, 10 x 7.875 inches. © Duane Michals. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York Carl Solway Gallery celebrates the launch of the Cincinnati streetcar. Use the No. 11 Brewery District stop to visit the gallery. After our opening, take the streetcar to the No. 17 Aronoff Center stop for the The Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art. Venue Participation Day · Sunday, October 9, noon to 5:00 pm  These exhibitions are held in conjunction with the FotoFocus Biennial 2016. As part of the Biennial, participating venues respond to the theme: Photography, the Undocument.

EXPO CHICAGO September 22 - 25, 2016 Visit us at booth number 516. Carl Solway Gallery 424 Findlay Street, Cincinnati, OH Cincinnati, OH 45214 Hours: Monday – Friday 9:00 – 5:00 pm / Saturday 12:00 – 5:00 pm / tel. 513.621.0069

Alan Rath and Duane Michals at Carl Solway Gallery

Fall Exhibitions at Carl Solway Gallery Fall Exhibitions Alan Rath New Sculpture Duane Michals Sequences, Tintypes and Talking Pictures Opening Reception September 9, 2016, 5:00-8:00pm Exhibitions continue through December 23, 2016 Duane Michals Lecture October 25, 7:00pm, Cincinnati Art Museum.  This event is co-sponsored by Carl Solway Gallery and the Friends of Photography at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Alan Rath · New Sculpture Alan Rath’s kinetic sculptures poetically integrate the human and the technological. Many incorporate computer-animated still images of human features, such as eyes, mouths and hands, displayed on LCD screens. These screens are mounted on sculptural armatures and the images are programmed to change in subtle progressive permutations. The screen images often appear to be involved in some form of communication. Alan Rath, Bostock, 2012 Aluminum, FR-4, polyethylene, delrin, custom electronics, LCDs, 81 x 45 x 33 inches For example, in the sculpture Bostock, 2012, five LCD screens each display an image of a single hand. The hands engage in sign language that translates the lyrics of Jethro Tull’s 1972 album, Thick as a Brick. The title refers to Gerald Bostock, the fictional eight-year old boy Ian Anderson credited with writing an epic poem upon which the album was allegedly based. The lyrics were actually written by Anderson. As a teenager in Cincinnati, Rath attended his first rock concert – Jethro Tull – with Carl Solway Gallery director, Michael Solway. At this young age, Rath was already building his own speakers and other electronics. The exhibition at Carl Solway Gallery will include eight LCD screen sculptures created during the last ten years. The exhibition will also include several of Rath’s recent explorations in robotics. Originally trained at MIT as an electrical engineer, he is one of the few visual artists who designs, builds and programs all aspects of his work. Alan Rath’s contributions to the field of contemporary sculpture and new media have received significant acknowledgement worldwide. His work is included in such major collections as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hara Museum (Tokyo). Born in Cincinnati in 1959, he lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. Duane Michals · Sequences, Tintypes and Talking Pictures Duane Michals is considered one of the most influential photographers of the 20th Century and he continues his pioneering approach to the medium into the 21st. He is best known for staged photographic sequences incorporating handwritten text created in the 1960s and 1970s. Provocatively breaking away from the established photographic tradition of highlighting powerful single images, he sequenced multiple images and wrote on their surfaces consequently emphasizing his role as a storyteller. His small, black and white photographs employ their narrative sequencing to address metaphysical issues such as memory, mortality, love and loss. Blurred figures created with long exposures as well as double exposures, imbue his photographs with a sense of mystery. To quote curator Linda Benedict-Jones, “The essential defining characteristic of Michals’ art is his rejection of the photograph as documentary evidence.” In his words, “Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.” Duane Michals, The Journey of the Spirit After Death, 1971 (detail) © Duane Michals. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York His exhibition at Carl Solway Gallery will feature five of his most celebrated sequences including the twenty-seven panel piece, The Journey of the Spirit After Death from 1970. Michael Solway first encountered this work in the Kolumba, an art museum in Cologne, Germany located on the site of the Church of Saint Columba and run by the Archdiocese of Cologne. Seeing these prints in the stairway of this building, a modern museum sharing its site with an ancient church bombed during World War II and a lower level of catacombs proved unforgettable. In 2012 Michals began painting on tintype portraits. An historical process from the Civil War era, tintypes are photographs printed on thin metal sheets. In this work, he combines painting and photography, 19th century portraiture with 20th century Modernist references. The exhibition will include nine of the painted tintypes and several recent films, Talking Pictures. In these short films, or ‘mini-movies” as Michals refers to them, he wrote directed and sometimes acted in this new work displaying his ever-evolving innovative and whimsical spirit. Duane Michals, Deja Vu, 2012, tintype with hand-applied oil paint, 6.25 x 8.25 inches. © Duane Michals. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York Duane Michals was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania in 1932 and lives and works in New York City. His work has been featured in countless exhibitions over a period of over fifty years. A major retrospective, Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals was organized by the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh) in 2014. Michals had a solo exhibition at Carl Solway Gallery in 1980. His photographs are included in at least 50 museum collections in the United States and over 30 museum collections abroad. He is the subject of two feature length films, Duaneland (2004) and The Man Who Invented Himself – Duane Michals (2013). Venue Participation Day · Sunday, October 9, noon to 5:00 pm  Although Alan Rath and Duane Michals represent different generations and work with different mediums, they share preoccupations with images of the human body, the passage of time, movement, rhythm and a sense of humor. Both exhibitions are held in conjunction with the FotoFocus Biennial 2016, a regional, month-long celebration of photography and lens-based art held throughout Cincinnati and the surrounding region that features over 60 exhibitions and related programming. As part of the Biennial, participating venues respond to the theme: Photography, the Undocument. __________________________________________________________________________ Expo Chicago Visit us at booth number 516.

Ben Patterson Remembered

BEN PATTERSON

1934-2016

We are deeply saddened by the passing of our friend Ben Patterson, American musician, artist, and founding member of the Fluxus international art movement. In 1960, Patterson moved to Cologne, Germany, where he became active in the radical contemporary music scene, performing in festivals in Cologne, Paris, Venice, and elsewhere. During this pre-Fluxus period Patterson created and performed some of his early seminal works: Paper Piece (1960), Lemons (1961), and Variations for Double Bass (1961). Late in 1961, Patterson moved to Paris, where he collaborated with Robert Filliou (Puzzle-Poems), and published his Method and Processes, an artist’s book comprising loose-leaf pages bound in a folder. Patterson joined George Maciunas in Wiesbaden to organize the historic 1962 Fluxus International Festival, and continued to be a major presence at Fluxus events until the early 1970s, when he retired to pursue ordinary life in New York City.

Although he remained outside the art world for more than 17 years, Patterson resurfaced for such events as the 20th Anniversary Fluxus Festival in Wiesbaden in 1982. In 1988, Patterson came out of retirement with his exhibition titled Ordinary Life, at the Emily Harvey Gallery, New York. In 1992, he returned to Germany to establish a headquarters for his work and travel.  Patterson’s work has been featured in many recent Fluxus exhibitions and performances throughout Europe, Russia, Asia, and the Americas. In 1996, he inaugurated the Public Entrance to his Museum of the Subconscious at Mt. 13th Month in Namibia, Africa. The traveling retrospective exhibition Benjamin Patterson: Born in the State of FLUX/us was organized in 2012 by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.  In the summer of 2015, Ben Patterson was included in the group exhibition 

By this River, Weston Art Gallery, Cincinnati. The photos below are installation shots of Ben’s pieces from this show. Included is an image of Ben performing Pond with the Weston Art Gallery Docentitos.

"It is possible that my interest in rivers could be traced back to my birthplace—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the ‘Three Rivers City,’ and that I have always lived near a major river: the Hudson in New York, the Seine in Paris, and the Rhine in Cologne, and now Wiesbaden.”

—    Ben Patterson in Notes to the Los Angeles River Concrete Poems, exhibition at the Solway Jones Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 2006

Ben Patterson, performing Pond with the Weston Art Gallery Docentitos,

By this River, Weston Art Gallery, Cincinnati, summer 2015

Ben Patterson handing out wind-up frogs to Weston Art Gallery Docentitos for performance, summer, 2015

Ben Patterson, Flying Bass, 2015 and Los Angeles River Concrete Poems, 2006/2015, installation shot, By this River, Weston Art Gallery, Cincinnati, summer 2015

Ben Patterson, Flying Bass, 2015, vintage double bass, LEDs, wood, oil paint, inkjet print on vinyl and nylon, an aluminum, 36 x 134 x 88 inches, By this River, Weston Art Gallery, Cincinnati, summer 2015

Ben Patterson, Los Angeles River Concrete Poem, 2006/2015, laminated digital photographs, text, cast concrete, wooden support, pump, reservoir, water, amplifier, 2 microphones, 3 plastic palm trees, overall dimensions variable, By this River, Weston Art Gallery, summer 2015