Michael Marshall and Rob Tarbell "Science and Nature"
Krause Gallery
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Michael Marshall is an artist, photographer, educator, physicist, platinum printer, creative ornithologist, gardener, digital image maker, illusionist, natural historian, cartographer, wood worker, yogi, encaustic painter, professor. Michael holds a BA in physics and an MFA in Photography. Marshall is captivated by the age-old schisms of Western thought sometimes known as the Cartesian split. It is that collision of paradigms between faith and empiricism, logic and intuition, embodiments of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. “Science attempts to define that which I do not understand, solid ground for my uncertainties” says Marshall. It is through a science degree and an understanding of the physical world that he first sought a relationship with his surroundings. But the world seems no less full of mystery and magic because of it. His perceptions, and hence his images, often function more like faith, only to point a finger at ineffable experience and mystery.
Rob Tarbell has been working with Smoke on paper for years. It is just now after his residency, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Moulin à Nef, Auvillar, France that he is now exploring other mediums with the smoke like ink and photography for example.
With Vitreous Humor, Tarbell’s interest lies in fabricating immediate yet elusive objects that play with a pleasurable deception as a way to channel a collective desire to suspend disbelief. The works consider how trust is gained and how obvious fictions become reality. Each piece hides in plain sight, evolving through migrations from drawing to photography to printmaking to sculpture. The works are deliberately conditional, where light and reflective surfaces appear and disappear as the viewer passes before them. Layers compress or pull apart, flatten or hover as scrims. Handwork and elaborate processes intertwine. Cutting reveals and builds, while the use of smoke suggests a clouding of thought designed to enhance the perception and insecurity of nuanced forms.
Evasive and indeterminate as if in limbo, the works ask the viewer to be willing to go along for the ride.
[Image: Michael Marshall “Panorama” Pigment Photograph, Encaustic 30 x 84 x 3 in.]
Media
Schedule
from May 07, 2011 to June 14, 2011
Reception For The Artist on 2011-05-19 from 18:00 to 21:00