calendario eventi  :: 

X

12/11/2003

Jeremy Kidd

Littlejohn Contemporary, New York

"ARCHITECTURALLY-BASED DIGITAL-PAINTINGS"
(NONADAPTIVE EMOTIVE EVOLUTION)

NOVEMBER 13 DECEMBER 13, 2003

In his most recent body of work, Jeremy Kidd is examining the potential for the subversion of the man-made with the organic, the biological, and the unexpected. His focus has been to try to express non-adaptive evolution of the man-made. In this case, non-adaptive refers to the evolutionary growth that takes place not as the result of evolutionary necessity (i.e. response to an environmental need), but as an expression and yearning of unexplained natural forces; forces that wish to express themselves not adaptively but reactively in an emotive manner.

These forces reveal themselves as adaptations that occur to architectural facades and take place as bio-morphic aberrations or deformities to the systematic patterns of a buildings' surface. The works in this exhibition serve as both paintings in the formal sense and as models for civic/organic hybrids, a kind of evolutionary reconciliation or mutation of man and nature. The works in this show combine photography with digital manipulation.

Kidd's earlier digital installations evolved from his semi site-specific series of photographs that were concerned with the digital grafting of morphic sculptural elements into their already questionable environments. In those installations, Kidd's forms had been developed from a synthetic polyurethane foam that embodied an organic yet other-worldly quality, replicating those forms in the Nova prints and juxtaposing two conflicting worlds---man's ecologically hazardous practices and Nature.

Jeremy Kidd's work has been included in the "UFO" exhibition at the University of Colorado Springs and the State University of Illinois, the "Pop Surrealism" exhibition at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, CT, and the 99' Biennial at The Orange County Museum of Art in Los Angeles. Earlier this year his work was featured in a solo exhibitions at the Irvine Fine Arts Center in Irvine, CA and at the Deutsche Bank in London. This is the artist's third solo show at Littlejohn Contemporary.

IN THE PROJECT ROOM:
ERIC BLUM
PAINTINGS

Within Eric Blum's paintings thick layers of pigmented wax suspend vague shapes, suggestions of celestial skies, organic and biological mysteries. These abstract encaustics paintings seem to implode with a sense of submerged and inaccessible energy. They are tantalizing embodiments of the artist's interest in the conflict between "the actual and the ideal, the desire to possess that which cannot be possessed".

Color, whether cool or warm, seems simultaneously transparent and solid in these paintings that absorb light and pulse with a viscous and seductive glow. The often eerie and otherworldly images are expressed through Blum's technique of layering oil and alkyd or watercolor between layers of beeswax. By repeatedly alternating these layers of transparent pigment and then wax, he can seal and infuse the imagery within a smooth, irrespirable confectionary skin.

This is Eric Blum's third solo exhibition at Littlejohn Contemporary. He is the recent recipient of a Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant, is included in Joanne Mattera's book, "The Art of Encaustic Painting: Contemporary Expression in the Ancient Medium of Pigmented Wax", and has exhibited widely throughout the United States. For visuals and further information, please contact Jacquie Littlejohn or Kim Toscano at 212-980-2323.

LITTLEJOHN CONTEMPORARY
41 EAST 57 STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10022
t-212.980.2323 f-212.980.2346

stampa

permanent link