Still Lives
press release
Still Lives
August 3 – September 9, 2018
Opening Reception Friday, August 3rd 7 – 9pm
At a moment when presumed societal norms seem to have broken down, Still Lives, curated by Alex Allenchey, looks at the instability of daily life. Contemplating the absence of the expected, as well as contemporary memento mori symbols, the exhibition spotlights cracks in the domestic, the shadowier sides of otherwise bright fixtures.
Traditional still lifes are flattened and dissolved in Amanda Baldwin’s paintings, where unexpected disappearances and reflections create small but unsettling disturbances. Polly Shindler zooms out a little further, showing the odd and sometimes eerie personalities our homes can assume when we’re not looking.
In the work of Zach Bruder, who paints over the assembled fabrics, tightly intertwined visual references force us to reflect on the ways in which we create meaning from scraps of the past. Slightly more ominously, Aaron Elvis Jupin airbrushes a glossy but gloomy present, creating landscapes of uncertainty and heightened suspicion.
Annie Pearlman, too, looks at the world outside our windows. Depicted in an almost liminal or dreamlike way, her environments have come unmoored, alternating between sinister and soothing. There’s an enticement to escape the strictures of society, to retreat from everything that makes so little sense. Returning to nature, as Deborah Brown’s figures do, offers the hope of rebelliously establishing a new order. Her protagonists, despite the turbulent pasts of their literary predecessors, are cast in an empowering light, demanding change, or at least some peace and quiet, from a maddening world.
