Ellen Hoffman "The Summer House"
Soho20 Chelsea Gallery
This event has ended.
SOHO2O Gallery Chelsea presents "The Summer House," a memorial exhibition of new work by artist Ellen Hoffman. The exhibition features large-scale drawings of charcoal and gouache on paper, as well as recent selections of studies from her sketchbooks. The drawings, which were made this year in her studio at the family home in Casco, Maine furthers Hoffman’s interest in the multiplicity of macabre narratives. In a 2003 statement the artist described her work stating;
"sometimes on those happy occasions of release from strife, thoughts come to us of grim possibilities. Sinister dramas play themselves out; macabre scenarios are allowed to rise up from our subconscious and flit about our heads, entwining themselves round the pleasure of country life with friends. Are they premonitions of dire events, or fantasies of punishments for deeds unconfessed?"
In one drawing Summer House #1, a house sits quickly, void of any signs of life while in Summer House #2 the same house is racked with the chaos of figures leaping from windows and wrestling with animals on the front lawn. In each of Hoffman’s studies one finds mostly individual figures struggling with both the awkwardness of their own bodies as well as their precarious environment, usually window ledges or various domestic settings. These simple contour drawings pull from the viewer a deep compassion and concern for the figures in the work.
Media
Schedule
from October 27, 2009 to November 21, 2009
Opening Reception on 2009-10-29 from 17:00 to 19:00