Linear Perspective

Laura Watt
Ellie Murphy
Björn Meyer-Ebrecht

April 14 – May 19th
Opening Reception April 14 6-9PM
Gallery open by appointment

This show began with an invitation to Laura Watt to both exhibit her work and to invite another artist of her choice with whom to show. Watt selected Ellie Murphy. Murphy received the same combined invitation, and she invited Björn Meyer-Ebrecht. The relationships between the works of the artists have a similar linear connection.

Laura Watt

Laura Watt’s paintings have long been an investigation of pattern, repetition, and overlapping structures. For Watt, pattern and repetition are a means of condensing information and experience, compressing language, narrative, and emotion. Laura notes:” We find so many patterns in the geographical world – and it is pattern that allows us to comprehend the landscape. We use a grid to map our physical world and we can also use the grid to imagine and create new spaces. So, rather than yoking the grid and pattern’s ability to condense – I am looking at how it can create space and speak concretely of the infinite.”

Ellie Murphy

Laura Watt’s and Ellie Murphy’s work share a similar interest in repetition, compression and expansion as Murphy’s work shifts from the representations within Watt’s paintings to the presentation of sculptural installations. Murphy braids the yarn, compressing together the colors and linear qualities and expands the braids and yarns as they occupy three-dimensional space. Murphy explains how her work relates both to the personal and cultural nostalgia, “I combine references to doll hair, crafts, folk motifs and Americana from my 1970’s childhood in Kansas with aspects of Modern, Conceptual, Multicultural and Feminist art. I see an interdependence between the multiplicity of cultures in our world and use the process of braiding as a way of playing with the unintended and humorous connections between them.”

Björn Meyer-Ebrecht

Ellie Murphy’s and Björn Meyer-Ebrecht’s work share a power to evoke nostalgia, Murphy with her braiding and Meyer-Ebrecht through his black and white photography representing historic images of West Germany. His work deals with abstraction as something that is both sculptural and painterly. Meyer-Ebrecht creates strong shapes of color within the photographic images that become a somewhat difficult-to-define power or authority. These shapes remind of remnants from a language from another time which we are only partially able to understand.

As each of the artists chose to show with one another, there are threads that connect the works and the viewer can experience some of this dialogue between the works. Formally the work moves from the Laura Watt’s paintings of repetition and patterns to Ellie Murphy’s installations of repeated braids and patterns of colored yarns. Björn Meyer-Ebrecht’s work bridges the media of painting and sculpture and connects to the abstraction of Murphy’s and Watt’s work while also launching into the representational world of the past.

human relationships in their natural habitat

A MACAS Collaboration with CFEVA

October 1 – November 19th 2011

Opening Reception Sunday October 2, 5-7 PM
Gallery Hours: Saturdays 1-4 PM

MACAS
25 West Mt. Airy Avenue, Philadelphia PA 19119 (map)
(267) 270 2787
info@mountairycontemporary.com

MACAS, in conjunction with The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), is pleased to announce an exhibition featuring the works of CFEVA Career Development Program Fellows Tim Portlock, Jennifer Williams, Kimberly Witham and Allison Kaufman.

All four artists share an interest in exploring aspects of the human condition, through habitats, personal relationships or histories.  The works in this exhibition all tweak the environments or relationship dynamics in ways that put the viewer on notice – something more is being said – using a visual vernacular that speaks to the staged theatricality of theater or architecture.

For Tim Portlock’s current digital print series, titled Ghost City, Portlock has been photographing abandoned buildings within a 20 block radius of his home.  Using digital animation/effects software, he uses this source material to construct virtual de-industrialized shells of cities – empty lots reverting to browned fields, a post-industrial pastoral landscape.

Tim Portlock, Ghost City #01, Tim Portlock, digital print, 72" x 60".

When viewing Kimberly Witham’s photographs, one is struck by the way several tableau genres are intermingled. There is the photographic convention of the domestic interior as shot for design magazines, which themselves are kissing cousins with the museum Period Room.  The carefully constructed domestic fantasy of the Period Room, in turn, conflated with the tableau of the Natural History Museum diorama, creates a world in which the artifice of relaxation and leisure – the promise of consumer culture – is contrasted by visions of animals in repose – or death – and a situation in which it’s difficult to tell which is which.

Kimberly Witham

“Trust Falls” is a silent, 5- channel installation of short, looping videos by Allison Kaufman in which she collaborates with divorced middle aged men, a recurring theme in her work. Kaufman and her subjects  engage in intimate caretaking activities typical of a father and daughter, or husband and wife in early or late life. These activities, which include shaving, braiding hair, and getting in and out of a hammock, require a sense of trust and at times, a negotiation or struggle. Without dialogue, the body language of collaboration and caretaking can be magnified and the poignancy in them revealed.

Allison Kaufman, Trust Falls, Multi Channel Video Installation, Silent, 2011

 Jennifer Williams  documents, deconstructs, and re-composes visual elements of cities, giving form to dissonance within the urban geography. The use of photography in her work is cumulative; she uses archival and current self-generated images to build large-scale collage-type forms.  Williams is fascinated with the organic and idiosyncratic architectural transformations evident on a macro and micro level within urban environments, specifically New York City. Identifying and commenting upon the metamorphosis of space/place due to the renewal/disinvestment of inner-city areas is a driving force behind her work.

Jennifer Williams

About MACAS

About the CFEVA, the Career Development Program and the CDP Fellow Artists

Tim Portlock, Jennifer Williams, Allison Kaufman, and Kimberly Witham are currently a fellows in CFEVA’s Career Development Program. Artists are selected for the two-year Career Development Program Fellowship by CFEVA’s renowned Board of Artistic Advisors. While active in the program, the artists have opportunities to experience a full exhibition schedule, receive career counseling and mentorship, earn money from the sale of their work, teach in the community and participate in numerous professional development opportunities. The program serves artists who live within 100 miles of Philadelphia, are not full-time students, and do not have gallery representation. The annual application deadline for the program is November 1st. More information about the fellowship can be found at www.cfeva.org.

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA) dedicates itself to making art careers viable for those who choose them, helping emerging artists reach their audiences, and promoting interest and understanding of emerging visual art among citizens of the community. The Center For Emerging Visual Artists, formerly Creative Artists Network, was founded in Philadelphia in 1983 to encourage the professional development and community involvement of emerging visual artists. CFEVA now serves artists through three complementary programs: Career Development, Regional Community Arts, and The Philadelphia Open Studio Tours.

About Philadelphia Open Studio Tours

Philadelphia Open Studio Tours is Philadelphia’s premier fall visual arts festival and a program of the Center for Emerging Visual Artists. Featuring over 350 local artists and engaging over 20,000 members of the community, it is the most comprehensive tour of artist studios in the region and the only event of its kind in the city. Each October, the Tours include self-guided tours of artist studios and creative workspaces, hands-on workshops, gallery and site-specific exhibitions, demonstrations, artist talks, and receptions. In 2011, the Open Studio Tours is proud to present Staged as a featured exhibition.

Studio Tours venues and events are divided East and West of Broad Street over the course of two weekends and run Saturday and Sunday from 12 – 6 pm. Staged will be open to the public as part of the Studio Tours West Weekend on October 1st and 2nd from 12 Noon – 6pm. The Philadelphia Open Studio Tours cumulatively provides an opportunity for the public to engage with Philadelphia’s entire arts community from a new perspective and based on individual’s own specific interests. No other program in or around Philadelphia consistently brings such an intimate and diverse cultural experience to the community free of charge and across such a large geographic area. For full festival information, visit philaopenstudios.org.

May 7 – June 4
Opening Reception Saturday, May 7th, 6-9 PM
Gallery Hours: Saturdays 1-4 PM

MACAS
25 West Mt. Airy Avenue, Philadelphia PA 19119 (map)
(267) 270 2787
info@mountairycontemporary.com

Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space (MACAS) is pleased to present artwork by Philadelphia artist Erin Murray and New York artist Mark Masyga.

Erin Murray, “Complexity and Contradiction on the Side of the Road"

Erin Murray’s crisp paintings of commercial and residential buildings borrow from the language and grammar of portraiture: these structures are depicted as individuals, wearing the evidence of their personal histories on their skin/façades.

Presented in the foreground, in full frontal or 3/4 view, with minimal background noise, these buildings gaze back at us.  In these paintings, there is no architect or planner;  these buildings are the sum of an accumulation of small daily decisions, accidents of weather, and the many and small imprints of their various and serial inhabitants.

Buildings can be humble, vain, weary, silly, sincere and beautiful – when we say a building has character, it’s really a shortcut for saying “this building has humanness – it’s humane because it is human”.   To anthropomorphize architecture, as Murray does in this work, is to mirror back our own essential natures to us.

Mark Masyga, untitled 2.01.11

Mark Masyga’s paintings and sculptures  share a sense of architectural implosion.  Things fall apart, fall together, fold, sprout.

Masyga’s paintings especially convey a sense of orderly linearity attempting to rise out of chaos,  architecture unfolding like reverse origami from an impossibly crumpled sheet of paper.

Masyga’s sculptures speak to compressive weight and physicality, of lumber and concrete.  There is the sense among the chaos of plywood sheeting and 2x4s that here, too, order may arise, defying entropy.

Erin Murray, “Miesian Influence Loop”

Mark Masyga

Opening Reception Photos:

Reviews

5/29/2011 Philadelphia Inquirer, Edith Newhall, Erin Murray and Mark Masyga

A smartly paired two-person show of paintings and sculpture by Mark Masyga and paintings by Erin Murray has one more Saturday to go at Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space.

Masyga’s paintings of stacked rectangular forms suggest the detritus common to industrial sites, such as unruly piles of wood pallets; that impression is bolstered by his sculptures of wood, plaster, Structo-Lite, and actual detritus that are surely meant to be his own table-size demolitions.

Murray has painted a series of modernist-influenced houses and commercial buildings that are the poor relatives of the elegant glass rectangles designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. These less fortunate structures have fake mansard roofs slapped on top of them, enormous front windows that reflect the hideous hodgepodge of architecture across the street, or are, perhaps, an abandoned gas station or a two-story early version of the strip mall. But Murray infuses her knock-off architecture with a dark sense of humor. The top of a pine tree sticks up incongruously behind a one-story office building, right in the middle, like a bizarre ornament, in Executive Mansardic; the abandoned gas station in Miesian Influence Loop is shown from the back, as if embarrassed.

March 5 – April 2
Opening Reception Saturday, March 5th, 6-9 PM
Gallery Hours: Saturdays 1-4 PM

MACAS
25 West Mt. Airy Avenue, Philadelphia PA 19119 (map)
(267) 270 2787
info@mountairycontemporary.com

Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space (MACAS) presents artwork by Philadelphia artist Alexis Granwell and Brooklyn artist Rick Lewis. Utilizing a variety of techniques and media, including painting, print and wall-mounted assemblage, the artists demonstrate their connection to place. Their work is as much about the performance of making as it is about the paradoxical tension between their use of fragile materials and the strength of their designs.

“Wax and Wane IV”, Alexis Granwell, courtesy CTRL Gallery, Houston TX

Granwell is inspired by the cycle of decay and renewal in the urban landscape.  Using detritus from the city she assembles constructions that suggest new possibilities. Her prints incorporate the lines and patterns of topographical maps leading us to a visualization of a psychological geography.

“Angry Sea”, Rick Lewis

Lewis’ art connects us to the Texan vistas where he grew up.  His aesthetic has developed from his spiritual connection to the natural formation of the land.  Rather than traditional landscape paintings, his work depicts the psychological perceptions of place, space and time.

MACAS is a small artist-run exhibition space in the northwest of Philadelphia.  The gallery’s program is focused on connecting artists and artist communities through exhibitions that pair artists from different regions.

Exhibition Photos:

Opening Reception Photos:

Reviews and Press:

3/27/2011 Philadelphia Inquirer, Edith Newhall, “Good Works”:

Good works

The latest show at the Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space pairs the assemblages of Alexis Granwell with the paintings of Rick Lewis and proves (again) that contemporary art can pass muster anywhere, even in an 18th-century carriage house in bosky Mount Airy.

Granwell’s delicate interminglings of colorful cast-off bits of cardboard, leather, wood, wire, paint, and thread look like abstract paintings set loose from canvases. They’re the descendants of works by artists like Judy Pfaff and Richard Tuttle, but with a whimsical architecture all their own.

All kinds of ingredients coalesce in Lewis’ small, rough-hewn abstract paintings – besides oil paint and dry pigments, you can find asphalt, marble dust, newsprint, and graphite in the mix. I see walls with remnants of posters and graffiti on them as a possible influence, but they can also resemble aerial views of landscapes.

Hurry. Only one Saturday left.

5/11/2011 SUPERMARKET ISSUE #1 – A NEW JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART

Listing:

Northwest Artists’ Collective
1 exhibition in 2 locations

September 3rd – October 22nd, 2010

Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space is pleased to collaborate with Allens Lane Art Center and to present works by the Northwest Artists’ Collective.

Opening Reception at Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space
Friday, September 24th 2010, 6 to 9 PM
Gallery is open Saturdays 12 PM to 4 PM and by appointment.

Closing Reception at Allens Lane Art Center
The Carolyn Fiedler-Alber Gallery
Friday, October 22nd 2010, 6 to 9 PM
Gallery is open Monday – Friday 10 AM to 5 PM, and evenings and weekends by appointment.

Participating Artists:
Elaine Bass *
Linda Carner
Deborah Curtiss *
Todd Frye-Matte *
John F. Hollis *
Martha Knox
Gail Kotel
Sol Levy
Mark Mattson *
Suzanne Moller *
Sherman Oberson *
Daniel Oliva *
Babara Rosin
Ellie Seif *
Rivkah M. Walton *
Wendy Wolf *

All artists will be represented at the Allens Lane Art Center portion of the show.
Due to space limitations, only those artists listed with an asterisk* will be shown in both locations.

The Northwest Artists’ Collective is group of over twenty painters, sculptors, print makers, photographers and fiber artists living and/or working in Philadelphia’s Northwest corridor of Germantown, Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill. The Collective members are professional artists who participate in the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours (POST) and have had extensive group exhibitions in the Philadelphia area since their inception in 2005.

Since its founding in 1953, Allens Lane Art Center has been a cornerstone of the Mount Airy community by bringing the residents together to participate in and enjoy the arts.  Allens Lane Art Center, in addition to being the home of the Carolyn Fiedler-Alber Gallery, has an active education program providing art classes for children and adults, and The Allens Lane Theater, dedicated to producing purposeful, challenging, and unique theater experiences centered around contemporary human issues which reflect the diversity and complexity of the Mount Airy community.

Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space is an artist-run exhibition space in northwest Philadelphia.  We mount shows that emphasize connections between art communities and networks between artists. To that end many of our shows involve exchange exhibitions with other like-minded artists spaces and guest curatorial projects.  We are pleased to be able to work with Northwest Artists’ Collective and Allens Lane Art Center for this exhibition.

Affinity
Hillerbrand+Magsamen, Abbey Ryan and Jury Smith

June 4th – June 26th, 2010

Opening Reception Friday, June 4th 2010 6 to 9 PM
Gallery is open Saturdays 12 PM to 4 PM and by appointment.

Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space is pleased to present Affinity, an exhibition of works by Hillerbrand+Magsamen, Abbey Ryan and Jury Smith.

Hillerbrand+Magsamen
Abbey Ryan
Jury Smith

View photos from opening reception at flickr.

Artist couples often share ties that resonate deeply in their professional practice as well as their personal lives. This exhibition explores the work of four artists and the way their work is intertwined. Hillerbrand+Magsamen are a Texas-based collaborative team that use video and installation to explore concepts of interpersonal space, memory and family dynamic. Abbey Ryan and Jury Smith are Philadelphia based artists who share a fascination with process and layering, expressed in very different mediums.
Hillerbrand+Magsamen

Hillerbrand+Magsamen – Accumulation, Video and installation, 2010

Four Place Setting is an experimental video trilogy by the collaborative team of Hillerbrand+Magsamen. Through performance, Four Place Setting interstices between art and the contemporary American family by playfully and poetically exploring perceptions of emotions, family, consumerism and media within a uniquely American subjectivity.

Hillerbrand+Magsamen will be presenting one segment of this trilogy, Accumulation.

In Accumulation, the innocence of a child dangles in a dark void and then a couple piles up tons of stuff from their garage: lawn mower, toys, tools, Christmas lights, and more into a mountain that they climb up as a means to get to another space. An auctioneer rambles away and the viewer is left to decide if the couple is buying or selling their material, physical and emotional accumulation.
Abbey Ryan

Abbey Ryan, 524-b, 2010

Drawing from her “A Painting a Day” still life project as groundwork Abbey Ryan has been developing a body of work that explores the conceptual and visual relationship between figure and ground, contour and space. Working with ink, she chooses shapes that, to her, are reminiscent of a spiritual icon. The shapes are repeated and averaged; often, this distillation makes the shapes not visually distinct enough to define.

Each layer of washed ink is the same value and color. The multiple contours and value variations are the result of shifting layers of the image; akin to the phenomenon of studying a still life object until it glows out of focus.
Jury Smith

Black Arch + Blue-green, Earthenware, glaze, 22 x 22 x 10 in., 2010

Jury Smith‘s ceramic forms result from of an elaborate system of building that has developed over years. Throughout the building process, the clay form is suspended in slings made of various types of material, each possessing its own unique properties (elasticity, weave, strength) to allow the weight of the clay to influence the form.

The finished object is bisque fired, placed into a large pool of water, and the waterline of the floating object is recorded onto the surface. Following this recording, the glazing delineates the object’s buoyancy and density. The line embodies the space, or breadth, held within the object that prevents it from sinking. This method is opposite that of the building, in that the void within the form, rather than the clay itself, determines the object’s position in space.

Added to the buoyancy record is a series of lines that denote the position of the object as it takes on water. Prior to firing, each object is given a small hole to prevent it from exploding during the firing. While submerged, water slowly enters through this hole and lowers the object below its buoyancy line and bit by bit under the water’s edge.

Brooklyn On Paper
Curated by Larry Walczak

April 10th – May 14th, 2010

Opening Reception Saturday, April 17th 2010 6 to 9 PM
Gallery is open Saturdays 12 PM to 4 PM and by appointment.

Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space is pleased to present Brooklyn On Paper, an exhibition curated by Larry Walczak.

Participating artists:

Thomas Broadbent
Edward Monovich
David Kramer
Peter Fox
Brent Ridge
Daniel Rosenbaum
Larry Walczak
Linda Ganjian
Robert Seng
Mark Masyga

View photos from opening reception posted on flickr

Every day in our culture paper becomes less important. Since the so-called ‘computer revolution’ of the mid-1990′s it has become less and less a necessity for today’s society. “Hard copies” take up space in the business world. New media runs rampant at art schools and art galleries. However in much of the contemporary art world the joy of paper still prevails. Historically, drawings or sketches on paper were thought to be just that, merely sketches for a bigger more ambitious artwork on canvas. But with drawings, prints, and the advent of photography in the 19th century art-on-paper has gotten its share of attention. Visual artists love the casual, quickness of working on paper. They often feel unburdened by the pressure of creating an important piece while working in their respective direction. The intimacy of working with paper can produce a variety of results and this exhibition aims to offer a quick peek at the work of ten Brooklyn-based artists who have a special affection for working on and with paper.

Thomas Broadbent produces lush watercolors of everyday objects in intriguing formations. In “Saving Your Place #2″ he prefers creating a still life in a geometric pattern of color and form. He desires overriding metaphors of the incomplete nature of things, the quest for knowledge or information in analogue form. He begs the question: are paper books becoming obsolescent.

Thomas Broadbent, Saving Your Place

Larry Walczak is fascinated by alternative photographic imagery on paper and with his “Cell Structure” piece he copies directly on panels of bristol board to create his wall installation. No darkroom necessary as he utilizes two color copy machines to acheive the illusion of a massive cell structure innertwined from panel to panel. This unique print was the result of “old technology” as it was produced with a Hewitt Packer color copier and even older Canon personal copier.

David Kramer has found success with his auto-biographical insights on paper. Kramer has created diary-like, confessional and witty image/text pieces for years. They sometimes resemble ads but always with a personal humorous observation involving his struggles with modern living and ins and outs of his dealings in the contemporary art world.

Bob Seng has been working with EXIT signs for years. He degrades and reconstructs store bought silk screened EXIT signs by very precisely scraping (exiting) the various layers of ink to release the light and color from inside the sign and at the same time creating a new EXIT space to escape into or away from.

Peter Fox plays with paint like it was taffy. His drawing was created by catching excess paint from his painting process with a palette knife and throwing it directly onto paper. He sees it as a way of transforming something simple into something complex. The result is a beautiful splatter of seductive colors that appear as if they could be peeled right off their paper surface.

Peter Fox, NO TITLE 2009-002, 2009, 8 1/2″ x 11″, acrylic on museum board

Brent Ridge’s “Heaven is Hell” uses opposite color connotations. These forms use the earthly and heavenly against themselves to invert our common perception of colors and what their associations mean. Combining the “spray” of modern processes and the “purity” of untouched material to create forms symbolic of the self and our relationship as a viewer to the art, this piece makes a plea of appeal to our common fragility in the face of overwhelming forces.

Edward Monovich‘s suburban landscapes reinterpret idyllic representations in advertising and children’s stories. Drawings investigate relationships between privilege and suffering. Brand names and bling, worn by the figures, propagate a mesmerizing cycle of fashion and consumption and an artificial sense of progress. Pastoral landscapes are tainted by the presence of lottery tickets, hi-tech detritus, and illusions to geo-political crises, reminding viewers things are not what they seem.

Mark Masyga‘s abstract painting on paper has been informed by both the physical appearance and the temporal nature of the built environment. This includes construction sites, deteriorating war bunkers, detritus left from earthquakes and wild fires. Masyga also finds comfort in humble materials (i.e. concrete, rebar, lumber) and has been exploring their physical, sociological and political uses. Besides his abstracted works on paper and canvas he has photographed countless construction sites in the NYC area.

Mark Masyga, untitled, 2009, 10″ x 8″, Oil on Paper

Linda Ganjian‘s paper tower is just that, a sculpture made entirely of paper. Each tower is comprised of forms that are derived from extinct alphabets. Ganjian traces and makes templates of the letters and then accumulates and starts arranging the individual paper pieces to create multi-leveled landscapes. She sees it as a way of interpreting the type architecturally, creating physical environments that exploit the beauty and intricacy of each letters formal qualities, whether geometric or calligraphic. Ganjian creates artwork ON paper and sculptures OF paper.

Linda Ganjian, Coptic Tower, 2010, 24″ x 18″ x 37″, Paper, acrylic, varnish, museum board, wood

Daniel Rosenbaum‘s drawing “Beehive” was completed on mylar with both pencil and oil stick. This piece is from a series of drawings which were created directly on tracings of topographical maps of superfund sites. Rosenbaum feels that “vegetable, animal and mineral form a new hybrid that is simultaneously decaying from a toxic brew”.

Daniel Rosenbaum, Beehive, 24″ x 36″, pencil and oil stick on mylar

Brenna K. Murphy, Potted Plants

Home: Reflections and Projections
Christina Day and Brenna K. Murphy

February 19th – March 20th, 2010

Opening Reception Friday, February 19th 2009 6 to 9 PM
Gallery is open Saturdays 12 PM to 4 PM and by appointment.

Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space is pleased to present Home: Reflections and Projections, an exhibition of the works of Christina Day and Brenna K. Murphy.

Christina Day, There Now

Guided by her personal history and memory, Christina Day’s sculptural works act as free-standing reflections of dimensional place. Her sculptures reconfigure and compress domestic architectural elements like doorways, corners, and stairwells. The relationship of these objects to memory can be likened to the way the edges frame a familiar photograph, a pocket locked off in space and time. Built as skewed conjunctions of space, her sculptures begin at places where the in-between becomes the center of attention.

Working primarily with her own hair, Brenna K. Murphy creates works on paper and site-specific installations of domestic objects and spaces. As the product of a nomadic upbringing, moving eight times and living in six states by the age of eighteen, she is interested in the relationship between the ideal of home and the body. She wonders if the body can be a surrogate home for those that don’t have one as is traditionally defined in our culture. Her art is both a testament to her struggle to create home for herself as well as the tool she uses to navigate her thoughts and emotions.

Both artists work with source material rooted in the concept of home, but approach it from different perspectives. Day’s work mines memories of domestic place, reflecting and reframing them into new forms. Murphy’s work, on the other hand, begins from an unrooted vantage, and projects a sense of imagined place into the present. We are very pleased to be able to showcase both bodies of work side by side.

On the Fringe of Nature
Amy Chan, Siobhan McBride and John Slaby

November 6th – December 5th, 2009
Opening Reception, Friday, November 6th, 6 – 9 PM

Gallery is open by appointment, arranging weekend visits is encouraged.

Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space is pleased to present On the Fringe of Nature, an exhibition of the works of Amy Chan, Siobhan McBride and John Slaby, opening November 6th 2009.

All three artists engage in work that inhabits the region where human habitation intermingles with the natural environment – a porous, permeable border where neither civilization nor nature remains pristine, and cross-pollination can create surprises.

Amy Chan’s paintings are pastoral landscapes in which the scale, color or gravity of objects is set askew, creating a sense of unease. The carefully observed foreground is set against an acidic sky that can act as either a deep atmosphere or a painted billboard. The painting style mimics screen-printing and wallpaper, with simplified plant forms and flat colors.

In Siobhan McBride’s work, solitary warehouses and vaguely habitable structures squat under darkened skies that hang low over the landscape; weeds and bracken push up through the margins between concrete, brick and debris. McBride is influenced by urban domestic living and the industrial debris of Red Hook, Brooklyn. She draws from various source material for her content – photographs (both taken and scavenged), and her own filtered impressions of everyday experiences moving within the urban landscape.

John Slaby’s work invites the viewer to witness the world of technology converging with the natural world. Knowledge hungry humans leave their mark throughout the landscapes while the creatures of the earth instinctively go about their daily rituals.

View photos from opening reception posted on flickr.

Amy Chan, Fiskars Rinne, 48″ x 48″, gouache on paper, 2009

Siobhan McBride, Moody House, 14″ x 20″, gouache on paper, 2009

John Slaby, Brave New World, 18″ x 26″, acrylic on paper, 2009

Two Together
Craig Kane and Timon Meyer

September 4th – October 16th, 2009
Opening Reception, Friday, September 4th, 6 – 9 PM

Craig Kane’s thoughtfully playful small scale sculptures and installations leave one with the feeling that something very personal and lighthearted is unfolding for the viewer. Tiny narrative vignettes assembled from improvised materials draw directly from Kane’s relationships, personal history, and the history of his own art practice. What comes together forms a story, a dialogue between Kane’s art and his own life.

Timon Meyer’s work – in which digital stills of daytime television shows and personal imagery culled from the internet are manipulated in subtle and not so subtle ways – conflates mythological fantasy with contemporary culture. Minotaurs, centaurs and suggestions of mythological beings exist in our every day world. The images themselves are both straightforward and unsettling, since whose mythology we’re seeing seems to shift. At times the work seems to represent the internal world of fthe protagonist, at others the image projected upon him by the external world, or both.

In both Kane’s and Meyer’s work there is a sense of an internal narrative, a story told to oneself that interfaces with a public narrative – how the world sees us. Both artists also incoporate materials and processes that reflect narrative’s patchwork nature – improvisation, revision and the sense of a protagonist are ongoing subthemes. Two Together allows for a dialogue between Kane’s and Meyer’s work that plays off their shared interest in storytelling and personal mythologies.

More work by Craig Kane and Timon Meyer
View photos from September 4th opening reception posted on flickr