Reimagining the who, what, where, when, how and why of the landscape in the artworld, Out There: A Landscape Survey showcases a group of select paintings and photography that embody the often overlooked power, movement, and spirit of our everyday surroundings and environment.
Modern West is thrilled to announce Out There: A Landscape Survey, a group show featuring the dynamic landscape artworks of Michael H. Coles, Shalee Cooper, Al Denyer, Phil Epp, Anson Fogel, Alexandra Fuller, Kiki Gaffney, Patrick Dean Hubbell, Tom Judd, Dimitri Kozyrev, Jiyoun Lee-Lodge, Beatrice Mandelman, Arlo Namingha, Eric Overton, Louis Ribak, Jerrin Wagstaff and Woody Shepherd. This exhibition will be on display May 19, 2023, through July 1, 2023.
Out There: A Landscape Survey showcases our artists’ individual take and vision on the longstanding traditions and practice of landscape painting and photography. Through a mix of vivid colors, collage, abstract elements, deconstructed objects, print techniques, photorealism, metaphor and minimalism, these artists project both nature and the built world around us in a whole new light.
Michael H. Coles is a mostly self-taught photographer living in Montana. A large body of his work concerns the American West. His photographs have been exhibited across the country and published in magazines and newspapers.
Influenced by her background in photography, Shalee Cooper has found inspiration in working from a minimalist perspective exploring the possibilities and relationships between the basic compositional elements of positive and negative space. Also finding inspiration in her many years of curation, Cooper’s pared-down, romantic, and innovative paintings that utilize raw canvas, black gesso and the use of spare, sometimes repetitive shapes and elements, invite the viewer to imagine and arrange their own compositions from the originals Cooper presents when exhibiting.
Al Denyer utilizes a simple, minimal, and repetitive approach in her mark-making to maximal effect. Depicting the various mountain ranges and geological features both here in Utah and across the globe, her paintings echo both the time-based construction of geological strata and the flow and movement of the natural elements found in the ranges she depicts, breathing new life into the traditional topological view of our world.
Phil Epp’s paintings are strongly imprinted with the open spaces of the Great Plains where he was born and has spent most of his life. His paintings reflect this celebration of open sky and landscape–all with a hint of human occupation–with the intention of engaging the viewer in this isolation and to incorporate timeless universal icons into the landscape.
Alexandra Fuller is focused on creating meaning in the raw landscapes of the American West through words, images, and film. She creates artwork that uses the backdrop of the American West to make sense of questions about truth, belonging, and what it means to be human.
Injecting vibrancy, geometry, and exploration of materials into the tradition of landscape painting, Kiki Gaffney reinterprets this long-standing movement to colorfully portray the imagery of her 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.
Patrick Dean Hubbell’s pattern-driven, atmospheric paintings reflect his exploration of materiality, spirituality, memory, landscape, oral tradition, and contemplation of identity in relation to ideas of contemporary Indigeneity. Hubbell’s works are composed of hand-gathered and ground natural earth pigments from the Navajo Nation, mixed with conventional acrylic and oil paints. He has applied those pigments across a variety of surface treatments, including traditional canvas painting formats, sculptural installations, and deconstructed canvas and stretcher bar works reminiscent of Navajo Navajo woven blankets. In Hubbell’s work, traditional Navajo art forms and symbols collide with expressive mark making and rich textures creating a balance and harmony echoing the beauty, ruggedness, and deep roots of the American West.
Tom Judd creates landscapes through collage and fragmentations of surfaces, materials, and imagery, speaking to the concepts of memory, metaphor, and the passing of time. Combining everything from wallpaper, found photos and postcards, handwritten letters, recipes, recycled landscapes, still life, patterns, and figures in an effort to imitate the eclectic nature of our memories, Judd’s work is an artifact from another time that imparts a contradictory sense of loss and discovery on the viewer.
Dimitri Kozyrev, a Leningrad, USSR-born artist, creates paintings that stem from his observations of actual, physical landscapes and mental landscapes of both his and the collective imagination. He reflects on the ruins of war, human impact, and the scars left behind on the land in the aftermath of our actions. Through his Modernist, Constructivist methods, he rearranges pictorial elements and visual perspectives to create a contemplative space within his paintings.
Beatrice Mandelman, (December 31, 1912 – June 24, 1998), known as Bea, was an American abstract artist associated with the group known as the Taos Moderns. Much of her work was highly abstract, including her representational pieces such as cityscapes, landscapes, and still lifes. She used collage references and techniques, both bright and subdued color palettes, and organic geometric forms to recreate the purity of nature she observed through her Modernist, Constructivist, and abstract lens.
A historic figure in the art world, Louis Ribak painted in a Social Realist style and, in the 1930s and 1940s, worked as a muralist for the Works Progress Administration and assisted Diego Rivera on his mural Man at the Crossroads, commissioned for Rockefeller Center. After moving to Taos, New Mexico with his wife Beatrice Mandleman, Ribak shifted to a more abstract style with a brighter color palette, influenced by the earth tones and natural colors found in his new home environment. He continued to paint the landscapes around his Taos home in this style until his passing in 1979.
Jerrin Wagstaff specializes in depicting the examination of his visual experiences in the internet era, and the complexities of living in an attention based economy. He draws upon images pulled from news media, staged catalogs, stadium events, and video stills. His individual themes of painting drift between desire, loss, and identity to shape personal and universal space.
Reimagining the who, what, where, when, how and why of the landscape in the artworld, Out There: A Landscape Survey showcases a group of paintings and photography by these select artists that embody the often overlooked power, movement, and spirit of our everyday surroundings and environment.
