Studio Montclair-Press Release

PRESS RELEASE          Contact:  Phoebe Pollinger
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STUDIO MONTCLAIR 11TH ANNUAL NATIONAL JURIED EXHIBITION

“Currents,” the annual national juried art exhibition sponsored by Studio Montclair, will be on view at William Paterson University’s Ben Shahn Galleries from March 24 through April 22, 2008. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.  Admission is free. A reception for the exhibit will be held on Sunday, March 30 from 3 to 5 p.m.

The show, in Ben Shahn’s Court Gallery, includes works by 77 contemporary artists from across the United States.  The exhibit, curated by Beth Venn, curator of modern and contemporary art and senior curator of the Department of American Art at The Newark Museum, includes artworks in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, ceramics, mixed media and installation art.

“At a time when so many aspects of life seem to depend on the wonders of the virtual world, there is a certain comfort in knowing that objects—real, physical things—still retain their power and gravity,” says Venn.  “The submissions to the 2008 Studio Montclair Annual Juried Exhibition are a testament to the single-minded dedication of artists to their craft…it is refreshing to see such a strong group of artists who do not shy away from the difficult, the time consuming, and the pursuit of an uncertain result.”

For example, Venn says, “Things To Do When You’re Alone” by Joseph Gerard Sabatino of Paterson “is a poignant meditation on life’s everyday challenges and decisions.” Written with white pencil on asphalt paper, it has the immediacy of an artist’s sketchbook or an author’s notebook.  “But one cannot help but get enthralled by the trails that each thought takes,” she adds.

The sense of the obsessive, the ability to pursue an idea to its rightful end, inspired many of the artists in this year’s exhibition, says Venn.  Carole Loeffler of Philadelphia meditates on one simple idea—the ubiquitous red balloon as a symbol of celebration—in her work “99 Red Balloons.”  Loeffler’s installation of 99 red balloons, each embroidered onto a small piece of fabric and installed in a random grouping, like a bunch of balloons preparing for flight, “suggests the balloons’ spontaneous travels while inherently referencing the imperfections of the hand-embroidered image,” Venn explains.

There are artists for whom the object holds sway.  “Radio Tubes,” an assemblage of found objects by Tina Stevens of Brooklyn, is an intriguing meditation on modernity and technology.  “The tight grouping of the vintage tubes of various shapes and sizes is both jewel-like and oddly unsettling,” says Venn.

Many of the submissions of photography were surprisingly fresh and inventive, Venn says.  John Fletcher of Ringwood, in his work “The Puppeteer,” “creates a funny though menacing scene of a shadow-like puppeteer hovering over an array of tiny American flags—serious political commentary with a humorous twist,” Venn explains.

Prior to joining the Newark Museum in 2005, Venn served as associate curator and curator of touring exhibitions for the Whitney Museum of Art, curator of the Peter Norton Family Collection and Family foundation, and as an independent curator.  A graduate of Augustana College, she earned a master’s degree in art history from the University of Delaware, and received a National Endowment for the Arts Curatorial Fellowship.  She is a member of the board of Art in general, an alternative arts space in lower Manhattan.

Studio Montclair artists participating in the exhibition include Shin Young An, Joseph Benevenia, Patricia Cudd, Noel Farese, Susan G. Hammond, Susan Herman, Eric Levin, Sharon Ligorner, Susan Lisbin, Clarence Mather, Jim Price, Marilyn Stevenson and  Nancy Tobin.


Leopardsinthetemple.net

Leopards in the Temple
www.leopardsinthetemple.net
Monday, November 5, 2007
“Reconfigured”: The state of contemporary art on view at the Basement Gallery’s national exhibition

Basement Gallery curator Michael Martin thought the odds were high that something good would happen if he organized a national, juried exhibition whose title and theme exploits both the historical importance and the expressive richness of the term “Reconfigured.” And leaving it up to “each artist to interpret what they think or feel the exhibition title means to them specifically” has enabled Martin to present a cohesive yet highly diverse exhibition that provides a revealing snapshot of contemporary art which is greatly enhanced by the oil paintings by Mandy Rogers Horton and the installation/sculpture by Tina Stevens.

Horton’s two paintings have the power to create a newly fashioned historical tradition that seems to turn certain works from the past into her own precursors. That is, movements, media, styles and eras not normally associated with one another like the Medieval Fresco, Pointillism, Surrealism and the late works of Francis Bacon converge as if in response to a summons issued by Horton’s “The Soft Animal of Your Body” and “In Search of.”

In both of these works, which seem to demand that they be viewed together, merging, bleached color patterns tainted by a single hue appear to outline the haunting remains of a sacred fresco. The unaccountable white background against which figures neither wholly abstract nor wholly representational appear in a state of suspension heightens our sense of having discovered a precious fragment that belongs to a vanished world. Along with this feeling of loss and unfamiliarity, however, the works seem to generate a quiet, dynamic energy that is derived from multiple sources. In fact, the longer we look at the paintings, the more we may start to detect signs of a violent and painful metamorphosis that appears to have been frozen at a decisive, and yet still indeterminate, moment. But it would perhaps be more in the spirit of Horton’s work to say that what we see depicted is the actual freezing of a crucial point in a struggle which somehow appears to be taking place simultaneously between two clashing life-forms and within a single “organism.”


This sense of bearing witness to an act of “reconfiguration” may give viewers the feeling that they are also engaged in a type of struggle, as their perceptions of the paintings’ figurative qualities repeatedly come up against the limits imposed by the abstract forms which continually threaten to engulf the painting. This shift from the figurative to the abstract is then reinforced and deepened when, as though in response to the gravitational pull of two opposing magnetic forces, we alternatively step away from, and toward, the works.

What may initially strike us most about Tina Stevens’ untitled installation on view is how “easy” it is to identify the form and content of the sculpture—especially since they seem to be one and the same: an arrangement of about 2 dozen screwdrivers with red handles on a white pedestal that is raised a couple of feet off the ground. But this feeling of recognition proves to be short-lived as we perceive how all the tools seem to be inexplicably interwoven with one another. And upon closer examination we also see that the shaft of each screwdriver has been bent in a manner that transforms the tool into a “new”, hook-like instrument. As a result, the misshapen, “melted” screwdrivers that nevertheless also appear unused, undamaged and oddly “functional” (even if no exact function for them comes readily to mind) seem to have magically shed their functional properties and taken on strikingly “aesthetic” features.

Stevens’ arrangement thus creates an effect similar to the one produced by Horton’s paintings in that she allows us to envision a process of visual alteration that normally occurs only on a computer screen. And so before long the scrap heap may begin to resemble by turns a Frank Gehry-like architectural model, a newly invented technological device, and the exposed, internal wiring of some mechanized apparatus.

But the works by Stevens and Horton do more than “stage” a moment of reconfiguration that points toward, and further develops, the history of modern art. They also suggest that a revitalized way of seeing should not restrict its field of vision to the realm of art.