Stephanie Patton is a multimedia artist whose work comprises sculpture, painting, photography, video and performance. Humor plays an important role in her work and is often used as a device to bring attention to more critical issues and transform her personal experiences into something universal.
For Nicole Charbonnet, just as history is the written experience of the debris of the past, art is the visual manifestation of that experience. Her work is about memory and her creative process is analogous to the way our minds retain ideas, feelings and images. The artist states, “Both form and content in my work are a commentary on not just epic themes of humanity and mortality, but a more Freudian statement about perception, desire, community, the illusion of originality and the anxiety of influence.”
Deborah Luster’s documentary photographs impart the community, culture and landscape of the South. Working with medium format cameras, she presents the rituals of daily life, the life forces in objects and the inner spirits of her subjects. As poet C.D. Wright describes, “She offers no theory, adheres to none; none stick back. She studies compulsively and applies in the particular, what works then and there.”
This exhibition of new work features pedestal and large-scale kinetic sculptures, as well as a water-activated fountain and theater installation. The elements in Lin Emery’s work continue to be derived from nature and she borrows natural elements – water, wind, magnets – to set them in motion. Besides searching the natural world, she explores history to create theater installations suggested by past worlds. The model for the “Mouth of Hell”, included in this exhibition, is derived from medieval images.
Rob Wynne’s debut exhibition with the gallery features recent poured mirrored glass texts and sculpted glass compositions, as well as earlier framed, embroidered canvases. The artist has a long-standing fascination with narrative. Utilizing words that resonate – overheard phrases and poetic quotations – he creates works that give a landscape to language.
Ersy is revered for her work rooted in precise craftsmanship of materials including bronze, silver and wood. Scale, perspective and presentation play critical roles. The desired effect is that the viewer’s own size and relation to the piece become questioned. She recently received high critical praise for her 40-year retrospective at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, “Ersy: Architect of Dreams.” Her exhibition at the Arthur Roger Gallery is based on work included in the retrospective.
Joseph Havel’s sculptures exemplify the fluid condition between meanings, associations and the histories of common materials. Through reconfiguration of shape and material, everyday objects such as shirt labels, collars, flags and sheets present new impressions without erasing evidence of the originals. The intent of the artist “is for memory, an associative pentimento, to dissolve the resoluteness of the forms into something more poetic.”
In “Mosquito Muerto” Keith Perelli seeks to expose our emotional defenses as a penetrable, raw façade of our psychological armor. The figures, painted as though from the inside out, have been rendered as stripped and dissected. They are woven into environments composed of tangles of flora, objects of antiquity and illusory abstraction.
Luis Cruz Azaceta began the series “Shifting States” about a year ago in response to the rapid state of change occurring in the world at large. Amid climatic change, collapsing economies, greed, war and revolution, individual citizens are rising against political, economic and social injustices. In this, Azaceta finds courage, faith and innovation mapping a new terrain. He confronts this process of shift in his work, which reflects his signature bright colored abstraction and figuration.
Ted Kincaid’s work explores the fusion of multiple artistic media, including painting and photography. His digital images embrace qualities and challenge traditions of each, resulting in paintings informed by photography and photography influenced by painting.