44 x 42 inches frame
Heather Gaudio Fine Art is pleased to present The Summer Show, a group exhibition featuring painting, works on paper and sculpture by gallery roster artists Hyun Jung Ahn, Tegan Brozyna Roberts, Fernando Daza, Jessica Drenk, Harry Markusse, Dakyo Oh, Matt Shlian, Nadia Yaron and Thomas Witte. The show opens on July 27th and will run through September 14th, 2024. The public is invited to attend an opening reception on July 25th, 5-7pm.
The artists featured in this exhibition use diverse materials in singular ways to highlight color, form, and materiality. Working mostly within the mode of abstraction, they articulate signature lexicons through an intuitive, processed-based approach resulting in engaging and visually stimulating artworks. These artists reference themes around our relationship with memory, personal histories, nature, and geographic locations.
About the artists:
Korean-born Hyun Jung Ahn explores memories, psychological interiorities, and emotional states of being by painting fields of color on canvas or linen. The artist stitches together several pieces of raw and painted material with a sewing machine, the threads and seams creating an alternative type of mark drawing across the surface. Curves and lines express hermetic, enigmatic forms, the carefully selected palette determines the emotive temperature of the artwork. Also working from memory, Tegan Brozyna Roberts uses mixed media to create visual manifestations of spaces and experiences she encounters in urban neighborhoods. As a nod to a family tradition of working with textiles, the artist constructs a type of "loom" through which she "weaves" hand-cut and painted paper shapes. Through abstraction, the artist's visual language manages to conjure maps, moving plate tectonics, and other geographic associations.
Spanish artist Fernando Daza investigates form, color, light, shadow, and texture using monochromatic Canson paper which he mounts onto linen or burlap. Through a meditative process, the paper is methodically hand-torn, precisely layered, and adhered to the canvas support. The torn sheets are arranged to create reduced geometric or biomorphic forms that are reminiscent of modernist shapes. Dutch artist Harry Markusse shares the same formal preoccupations in his exploration of color, form, light, space, and movement. These are conveyed through a colorful interplay of painted bands that travel across the canvas, turning into themselves and giving way to other ribbons or geometric forms. Although taking an improvised and subconscious approach to painting, Markusse will later recognize his imagery and visual dialogues from shapes he encounters in his day to day.
Jessica Drenk repurposes every-day materials such as pencils, books, PVC pipe, and even cotton swabs and junk mail to make objects resembling natural formations. Her works can take on the appearance of microcosms, or morph into the macro sphere emulating cross-sections of trees, geological strata, slivers of rock, eroded riverbeds, calcified stalactites, and other large accumulations. The sculptures of Brazilian-born artist Nadia Yaron also reference nature and our relationship with it. Made of salvaged wood, alabaster, marble, and other locally sourced stones, these stacked table-top pieces and modular columns conjure layered landscapes topped with clouds or can appear anthropomorphic, like ancient ritualistic objects. Also sharing a deep connection with nature is Korean artist Dakyo Oh, who sources inspiration from the sunlight touching the vast expanse of the sea, to tiny rings created by droplets of rain on a water puddle, to ecosystems on shaded stones. The artist brings her paintings to life by mixing minerals, soil, and other natural materials which she applies to hemp canvases. Oh's richly textured paintings are not literal representations, rather interpretations evocative of the quiet forces behind life and its origins.
Two other artists in the exhibition work exclusively with paper in signature ways. Matthew Shlian's intuitive approach creates stunning three-dimensional objects where color, light, patterns, and planar shifts come together. His geometric assemblages and modular aggregations begin as patterns drawn in a notebook before he continues to puzzle out his concepts with paper using his hands. For Shlian, the element of surprise and discovery are integral to his process. While Thomas Witte's work is the most representational in the exhibition, his practice is equally process-based. Sourcing his imagery from 35mm slides, Witte selects the scenes he finds interesting, cropping and zooming in on them before projecting them on paper. Images of family vacations, table gatherings, city streetscapes and the like are drawn and then meticulously hand cut. At times, Witte applies a layer of tissue paper colored with his own created pigments. These reclaimed and recontextualized narratives are snapshots from another era, yet they portray recognizable scenes and familiar objects that are windows into a collective past.
