When we look at the world around us, the images we perceive are first presented to us in the form of rays of light. This light reflects from an object and enters our eyes, which then focuses the signal and delivers it to the brain to be interpreted as an image. Through this interpretation, an image is constructed, we partly imagine and create what we see. Is sight an abstraction of reality? What and how do we each perceive? In GLEAMING, each artist shares their own distinct abstractions of the familiar.
Kelie Bowman’s paintings on paper allow the figurative to dissolve into abstraction where layers of the external world meet the internal worlds of our mind and body. Inspired by her recent residence on a sailboat, these pieces reflect the endlessly new landscapes of pattern and repetition found in the restlessness of moving water.
STO’s papier mache sculptures focus on the deceivingly simple: tools that might be found in a shed and household items such as a broom and a bag of trash lay on the floor, as if waiting to be taken out. In zeroing in on objects that would normally be deemed as merely functional, his painterly takes on the mundane by breathing new life into what we usually ignore.
Jessie Vala’s sculptures and drawings explore the human form crumbling open to minerals and textures of the earth. Human figures morph with abstractions of the forest, sea and rocks, at once form is overtaken melting away to an elemental love affair.
Rob Doran uses the power of objects to reduce portraiture into still life, revealing the ghosts that haunt the vessel, the architecture, the linens. Seemingly a kind of neo folk art steeped in storytelling, memory and meditative communication, a shaker utopia where the landscape is a hat.
GLEAMING will be on view at Synchronicity Space from February 11 through March 10, 2012. An opening reception will be held Saturday, February 11 from 7 to 10pm, with a special music and video performance from Light Hits at 7pm.
