Press Release
- Exhibition: Expanding the Dialogue: Part One
- Showing: August 18th 2016 - October 1st 2016
Expanding the Dialogue: Part One features Colorado women currently working in abstraction, whose work has earned them a position of prominence within the Colorado art community. Women artists have historically been undervalued and underrepresented in the art world. This show aims to question and counteract this centuries-old trend, while simultaneously celebrating the expressive and direct nature of abstract art. Presented in conjunction with Women in Abstract Expressionism at the Denver Art Museum and Colorado Women in Abstraction at the Center for Visual Art.
Part One (August 18th – October 1st) features subtle, ethereal pieces from Tonia Bonnell, Taiko Chandler, Sophia Dixon Dillo, Carlene Frances, Jane Guthridge, Nancy Koenigsberg, and Wendy Kowynia.
TONIA BONNELL
Using repetitive marks to develop my images, I explore the concept that complexity can arise from the interaction of many simple components – examples include flocks of birds flying in unison, molecules and microscopic particles forming our visible world, and separate notes forming a musical composition. In these drawings, the individual marks – like notes of music – gain complexity when composed and layered. Drawn on the front and back of the drafting vellum, the marks appear to merge into a fluid form while remaining separated by varying amounts of space. The thin, translucent drawing surface allows the form to appear whole while also acting as a barrier: marks are either on the front or back but cannot occupy the space of the drafting vellum. Remnants of erased marks blur the boundary of this barrier and add to the illusion of depth or volume. The resulting images invite the viewer to draw closely, inspecting the manner in which the marks interact with the surface.
TAIKO CHANDLER
My work explores different aspects of both natural and artificial life—the colors, shadows, lines, and textures that I see every day. I like to take photos of that life, but printmaking offers me a more expressive medium by which I can transfer my impressions to paper. I am fascinated by the patterns that I see in dew drops, flowers, refracting light, even rust, decay, and debris. My work reflects these patterns of creation and erosion. Within printmaking, I particularly like monotype because it is a single impression that is not repeatable—the outcome can never be completely controlled or predicted. Within this highly organic process, I enjoy blending the colors, and designing and cutting the stencils that I use to subtract and add to the space. This tension between chaos and control is what makes this medium so challenging, but also so exciting. I love the whole process—some of it planned, but most of it spontaneous.
SOPHIA DIXON DILLO
I am fascinated with how light can be both visible and invisible at the same time. Light is always present, yet not always seen. My works play with this internal contradiction in the nature of light. The result is a fusing of the materiality of the art object with the immateriality of light, creating a multivalent visual experience that subtly changes as the viewer moves.
I am drawn to non-objective abstraction because it tends to strip away the layers of meaning in which our everyday lives are embedded. Non-objective images emphasize a space that exists before labeling, before thinking. Unobstructed by familiar icons, a bodily felt dialogue between the viewer and the work of art then might arise more easily.
The Emergence Series are ‘essentialized drawings.’ Marks are incised into the surface of thick watercolor paper. When lit from above, the incisions create a play of light and shadow on the newly three-dimensional surface. The pieces are intimate, requiring the viewer to come close to see the interplay between light and form emerge from the empty plane of the white paper. The all-over patterns encourage the eye to alternate from the whole to the particular and back again.
CARLENE FRANCES
My work emerges from the aesthetic power of Asian design elements. I explore non-objective line, symbolic circles (enso), squares, and the relationship among color, content and opposites. It reflects the juxtaposition of complexities versus simplicities;large simplistic planes of glazed luminous color fused with shapes and complex areas of spontaneous gestural lines. I seek to eliminate the unnecessary so the necessary may speak. The result is the harmonizing of ostensible opposites (yin& yang); therefore, creating balance.
This body of work is particularly important to me. It is a challenge to leave the comfort and seduction of intense color, while finding new ways to communicate with the viewer. David Batchelor said it so well;“luminous grey palettes can be potentially as rich and complex as other colors, yet in their own way, very unlike other colors. The grey makes the luminous more luminous and the luminous makes the grey so much greyer.”In this series Surface, my paintings emanate more than a visible or tactile outward appearance. Every stroke, every layer, emerges and contributes to the exterior and interior surface, occasionally revealing itself to the viewer.
JANE GUTHRIDGE
My work is inspired by the abundant sunlight and dramatic vistas of Colorado.I have always been interested in looking closely at nature and find that the vast areas of wilderness in the West allow for a deeper pondering and contemplation of the ethereal qualities of the natural world — the rich colors of the land, the geometry of plants, the patterns of dappled light through trees. My work is a link to nature in a society often surrounded by an urban environment. Studies have found what I have always felt to be true – that immersion in the natural world brings peace, joy, the ability to meet life’s challenges with a positive attitude and to see the interconnectedness of all things. Nature offers a rich complexity of ever changing patterns that appeal directly to aspects of our human consciousness.
I am interested in simulating the changing light in nature and the transcendent experiences light creates. I use a variety of translucent materials that bend and refract, obscure and reveal, diffusing light in various ways. Many of the colors you see are the result of seeing one color through another. As the light surrounding the work changes throughout the day, the work will change as well. I think this constant change is a beautiful metaphor for life.
NANCY KOENIGSBERG
For the past twenty years Koenigsberg’s work has been concerned with interlocking lines and the spaces they form. She creates a sense of weightlessness and luminescence by the manipulation of narrow gauge industrial wire, exploring the contradiction between metal elements known for their strength and durability and the delicacy of the textiles which are created. These lace-like layers of nets allow for transparency and the passage of light and the formation of shadows. In other works the nets are thickly layered and become almost opaque. Lines cross and re-cross to create a complex fabric and tangle of shadows. The objects appear fragile, but she seeks to maintain their strength through the use of these materials.
WENDY KOWYNIA
My interests lie in the iterative nature of time and existence: the accretion of moment upon moment, memory upon memory, thread upon thread. When a series of similar actions accrete they construct more complex patterns. My engagement in the act of accretion is an opportunity to connect with and consider the ideas and activities that underlie and construct our complex realities.
My favorite tool is a simple floor loom. The loom provides for a specific quality of exploration: the intersection of the horizontal and the vertical. It is a grid where interactions take place between the spiritual and the material, the seen and unseen.
The Line Drawing: Ode to Agnes series is based on the grid structures of Agnes Martin’s ‘On a Clear Day’ series of prints (1973). Martin dedicated her practice to the exploration of these essential grids. Like her, I find that a simple structure or logarithm generates infinite possibilities.