Melinda Hackett "Shape Shifting, Visual Labyrinths"
Gallery 151
This event has ended.
Gallery 151 presents a stimulating new media collaboration between artist and programmer; where analog painting is captured digitally bringing artist Melinda Hackett’s detailed world into a visually moving space for the first time. Hackett's paintings refer to organic space and unfixed time. She creates a world full of images that float, hover, creep, spin, hang, roll and sleep in corners. Inspired by the sense of motion in Melinda's work curators Laura O'Reilly and Derrick B. Harden paired Hackett up with computer programmer Michael Maulser to create "moving paintings". Maulser has successfully captured Melinda's work, seamlessly bringing her world to life through computer processing. "SHAPE SHIFTING: VISUAL LABYRINTHS" will feature new large scale oil paintings by Hackett, accompanied by one of a kind "Moving Paintings" displayed on screens.
“The images come from an internal source. They contain a vital impulse, and are alive as if subjected to breezes, weather and climatic conditions. My paintings represent states of non linear time. It is less that a singular event is taking place than that a group of different objects are moving through the picture plane at various rates of speed and in opposite directions, some gliding slowly and others whirring as if in a blender. Nature is not in a state of decay, nor is it symbolic or nostalgic for the past. The paintings are largely fragmentary in that they exist in one moment of time, so do they exist in one torn swatch of space. There is a sense that the activity continues outside the borders of the paintings as the forms flirt with the edges or get chopped off by them. Some forms are only just coming into being while others have already 'come out' and some just like to watch. By virtue of their inability to be fully identified, they remain in the realm of the poetic, a sum of images to form a whole, and the way they relate to each other is meant to be read experientially and not categorically. If there is a story to tell, it is up to the viewer to tell it.” Excerpt from Melinda Hackett Artist Statement, melindahackett.com
Background:
Melinda Hackett was born in New York and currently lives and works in New York City. She received her MFA from Parson School of Design in New York and her BA from Hobart William Smith College in Geneva New York. Her most recent solo exhibition was in 2010 "The Paumanok Paintings" 4 North Main Gallery, Southampton, NY. Hackett has exhibited work in over eleven solo shows and numerous group shows such as "La Superette" at Deitch Projects, New York. Hackett is also an EMERGENCY ARTS founding member, artist in residence and was a 2010 artstar.com featured artist.
Curated by: Laura O'Reilly, Derrick B. Harden & Michael Namer
Computer Processing by: Michael Maulser Associate Curator: Annalisa Alfani
Media
Schedule
from May 11, 2011 to June 01, 2011
Opening Reception on 2011-05-11 from 18:30 to 21:30