Perception spotlights the voice and talent of our artists with a diverse exhibition that features a range of medium, scale, technique, and vision–all refined and redefined through a woman's lens.
Modern West celebrates Women’s History Month with Perception, an exhibition featuring works from our amazing roster of women artists, on view now in our Upstairs @ Modern West gallery. Featured are works by Rebecca Campbell, Shalee Cooper, Al Denyer, Angela Ellsworth, Alexandra Fuller, Kiki Gaffney, Emily Hawkins, Suzanne Hill, Amy Jorgensen, Lenka Konopasek, Jiyoun Lee-Lodge, Anna Laurie Mackay, Beatrice Mandelman, Pia Van Nuland, and Meggan Waltman.
Injecting vibrancy, gesture, and exploration of materials into the tradition of Realism, Rebecca Campbell and Kiki Gaffney reinterpret this long-standing movement to colorfully portray the imagery of their everyday life and environments. Gaffney–who’s works intricately depict scenes of the natural environment–utilizes traditional mediums like graphite and acrylics, alongside glitter, fluorescence, and photo transfers to convey the systems she sees and connections she feels in nature.
Taking cues from the vast lexicon and tradition of Geometric Abstraction, Shalee Cooper, Angela Ellsworth, Beatrice Mandelman, and Meggan Waltman solidify their voice and new interpretations of this seemingly simple, often misinterpreted artistic style of shapes, colors, and mark-making. Angela Ellsworth’s mixed media paintings place her process–thought, creative, and material–at the forefront and highlight her journey of discovery through subtle, delicate, yet powerful abstract works.
Applying and interpreting line–one of the basic elements of art making–across a wide range of mediums and approaches, Al Denyer, Jiyoun Lee-Lodge, and Anna Laurie Mackay,
utilize this basic element as the main vehicle for their unique narratives on division, isolation, geopolitics, and nature. Anna Laurie Mackay colors and prepares Gampishi–a delicate, Japanese-made specialty silk tissue paper–and then cuts and weaves this into linear compositions that reflect her memories, perceptions, and connections to the natural spaces she occupies.
Approaching sculpture from both traditional and non-traditional materials and techniques, Lenka Konopasek and Suzanne Hill construct objects that contain worlds of mysterious beauty and concrete, universal meanings. Suzanne Hill’s ceramics explore her relationship with the traditional language and structures of ceramic practice and her fascination with the flowing lines, forms, and colors of the natural and cosmic spaces she finds inspiration in.
Exploring the possibilities and materials of another longstanding tradition in the Arts–the act of printmaking–Alexandra Fuller, Emily Hawkins, Amy Jorgensen, and Pia Van Nuland apply a range of techniques–photography, cyanotype, photogram, linocut, and laser etching–to create imagers of memory, political meaning, and existential identity. Emily Hawkins works with the cyanotype process–treating a surface with iron salts that react to UV light–to create multi-layered imagery of her household toys (nerf gun bullets, blocks, paper airplanes) that result in fossil-like record of play and are intended to question the expectations placed on mothers as family historians and on family life.
Exhibition will be on view from March 1st - April 30th, 2023 in our Upstairs@Modern West space.