Underdonk

press release

Underdonk presents Pliable Plane a group show featuring the work of Ryan Crowley, Poppy DeltaDawn, Vandana Jain and Mike Estabrook, Mónica Palma, Dominic Terlizzi, and Ben K. Voss. Curated by Liz Ainslie, the show will run October 21-November 19, 2023.

Closing reception: Sunday, November 19, 5-7 pm

Through material, color, dimension, and method, the works in this exhibition reveal a flexibility that results in tactile and visually engaging surfaces. Textiles, sculptures, and paintings bend expectations while on the wall or the floor. Expanding upon Anni Albers’ term, material pliability meets the plane of painting, therefore upending expectations of surface and space.

Ryan Crowley’s sculptures take on the look of drawings with color and pattern applied and rubbed into white-washed castings and assemblages. Coloration is a residual effect when one part of the piece rubs against another, distributing paint like a worn cog in a machine. 

Text, figures, and pattern emerge from the threads of Poppy DeltaDawn’s hand-woven samplers and combine pop cultural icons with weave structures to form a visual lexicon. Through her indexical compilations of both original and lifted images and structures, DeltaDawn produces experimental weavings that sample her own trans experience.

Incorporating found objects and materials into the weaving process, Vandana Jain breaks with traditional methods stretching threads to their limit, allowing foreign objects in. Mike Estabrook is game to interweave his paintings in collaboration with Jain, resulting in undulating colorful wall hangings.

Delicate paper is bent and folded, molded, and calcified in the work of Mónica Palma. Pigments and particles pepper the surface with delightful grit. Painterly planes are pulled and buckled, held together with twine, evidence of the artist’s physical experience with each piece. 

The plane of Dominic Terlizzi’s paintings is made of paint, but not painted. Textures like toast and crackers are cast in acrylic paint and carefully arranged, leaving a confounding collection of uncanny items. These maximalist mosaics are surface upon surface. 

Ben K. Voss’s paintings have the presence of handmade vintage handkerchiefs with delicate patterns and with a vigilant focus on construction through color. The small scale invites us to reorient our bodies in a space to take in the power of specificity.

Ryan Crowley lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. He received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2012 and a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2007. Crowley has had solo exhibitions at Wayfarers in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Anderson Gallery and Reference Gallery in Richmond, VA. His work has been included in shows at Hometown Gallery, Brooklyn, Coustofwaxman, Manhattan, NY, TSA, Chicago, Julius Caesar, Chicago, IL, Mass Gallery, Austin, TX, Sawyer Yard, Lawndale Arts Center, Houston, TX, Sediment Gallery, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA, Fourth Wall Project, La Montagne Gallery, Boston, MA. For the next year he will be an artist in residence at the Roswell Artist In Residence program in Roswell, NM.

Poppy DeltaDawn is an artist and educator making work that is guided by material. Recent projects include exhibitions and programming at H Space Gallery & Muted Horn (Cleveland, OH), Ortega y Gassett Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Below Grand (NYC), Zürcher Gallery (NYC), Standard Space (Sharon, CT), and Heidelberg Project in Detroit, among others. Recent awards include a Media Arts Fellowship and Workspace Fellowship at BRIC Arts Media (Brooklyn, NY), and residencies at Caldera (Sisters, OR), The Studios at MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), ACRE Residency (Steuben, WI), among others. Her work has been written about in Site Unseen, Hyperallergic, and Maake Magazine, among other publications. DeltaDawn is an Assistant Professor in Visual Art at the University of Kansas where she teaches weaving and other fiber-based processes.

Vandana Jain is a weaver and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She often uses found materials in her work, to contrast alongside traditional techniques and the craft of weaving. She is interested in how she can embrace and transform these materials into works that can envision imagined futures outside of capitalism.  She is currently an artist in residence at Pioneer Works. Recently, she is collaborating on an ongoing series of works with her husband, Mike Estabrook, where he makes paintings that she cuts into strips and then rebuilds through weaving.

Mike Estabrook is a Brooklyn based artist originally from the Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois. His work is characterized by bold color and expressive, fantastical figuration. He works in diverse media including animation, drawing, painting, installation, and music. Estabrook’s work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and festivals worldwide, including Real Art Ways, Hartford Ct, Gallerie SE Konst, in Falun, Sweden, Artisterium in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, Mixed Greens NYC, NY, the Malonny Festival, Marijampolé, Lithuania, Collegium Artisticum Terezije, Sarajevo, BiH, The Queens Museum, The Bronx Museum, Quartair Fine Arts, Den Haag, NL, PPOW Fine Arts, and PS1/MOMA.

Mónica Palma was born in Mexico City and studied visual art at the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa, Veracruz.  She received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University.  She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.  Her work has been shown at TSA (NYC), 245 Varet Street (NYC), Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City),  Soloway Gallery (NYC), Underdonk Gallery (NYC),  Essex Flowers (NYC), TV Projects (NYC) and My Pet Ram (NYC).  

Dominic Terlizzi currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Select solo exhibitions include: A Spirit Knows A Shadow Shows, Craig Krull Gallery Santa Monica, CA, Zero Hero Yolo Solo, ICA, Baltimore, MD; and Head Fake, Invernadero Gallery, Fresno, CA.  Select recent group exhibitions include: 12 hour day – 12 hour night, Helen J Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Terrible Fathers, The Clemente, LES, NY; Brooklyn Bridge, Mc Bride Contemporarian, Montreal Quebec, Canada; Someday This will All Be Yours, The Front, Manhattan, NY; Weeds in the Woods, Headstone Gallery, Kingston, NY;  If you surrender to the wind, you can ride It, Peripheral Space, Los Angeles, CA; Hang Ten, Good Naked, Rockaway, NY; Preserving a Find, Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia, PA; and A Minimal Relief, NEVVEN Gallery, Gothenburg, Sweden. Three monumental public sculptures were completed by Terlizzi for the city of Baltimore. He received the Maryland Artist Equity Grant, Hoffberger School of Painting Award, Triangle Workshop Fellowship, PNC Transformative Art Project Grant, Belle Foundation Grant, and received two Rema Hort Mann Foundation Nominations. He holds an MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting MICA 2008 and a BFA from The Cooper Union NYC 2003. 

Ben K. Voss lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He has had solo exhibitions at Left Field in Los Osos, California; Gazebo in Brooklyn, NY and 57W57 Arts in NYC. Group exhibitions include Tappeto Volante, Brooklyn; Sperling, Germany; Tourist, Vermont; Peninsula Art Space, Brooklyn; George, Brooklyn; Fjord, Philadelphia; Wild Palms, Germany; and Monte Bianco Montagna Sacra, Italy. His paintings have been published in New American Paintings, Edition 140 and ArtMaze, Issue 13. A collaborative publication Imprints with artist Midge Wattles and publisher Chateau International was released in Sept 2020. He is currently a MFA candidate at Hunter College in NYC and has a forthcoming two-person show at Weatherproof in Chicago, IL in November of 2023.

Gallery Hours, Saturday-Sunday, 1-6pm
Contact: [email protected] 518-281-1295