"What's the Story?" Exhibition
Rare
This event has ended.
RARE presents What's the Story?, an exhibition of new paintings by Huey Crowley, Dawn Frasch, Luis Rafael Galvez, and Emet Sosna. Each artist depicts visually and psychologically disturbing scenarios based on personal narratives, experiences, and back-stories. The show runs from September 6 through October 4, marking the start of RARE's 14th season and the artists' first exhibition at the gallery.
Crowley re-interprets popular childhood fairy tales through the eyes of those who never had these stories read to them as children. In his paintings, he imagines how one would envision such fables without having had the benefit of a role model to explain the morals they teach. Frasch looks back in time to early music, writing, and engravings to investigate how power was wielded and gives this theme a contemporary spin in paintings that explore power dynamics, particularly between men and women. In her magical worlds of violent upheaval, replete with colliding symbols of the feminine mystique and male dominance, Frasch demonstrates that the struggle for power is a never-ending, tumultuous battle.
Galvez describes his paintings as "contradictions" emanating from "the ugly randomness of life and the tranquil beauty of the world." Influenced by the humor- coated violence of American cartoons and the hauntingly religious Mexican holiday known as Day of the Dead, Galvez begins his paintings as short written narratives and then blacks out all but those words that spark compelling images, which he transcribes onto canvas in his patented pink tones. Sosna will combine various figurative painting traditions (with an emphasis on Magic Realism, Surrealism, Miniature Art, Japanese Scroll Painting, and traditional portraiture) in a single work to create a quasi-narrative that serves as a metaphor for the nature of self- expression. His paintings pose the question of whether the depiction of others is a form of the individual artist's expression or the result of pre-conceived notions based on previous depictions.
Crowley graduated with a BFA in painting from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (WI) in 2009, and has participated in group shows in Milwaukee, New York, and San Francisco. Frasch, who earned an MFA from Hunter College in New York, has exhibited in one-person and group shows in Amsterdam, New York, Oakland, Oslo, Philadelphia, Paris, and Zurich. Born in Mexico and currently living in Chicago, Galvez attended the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design; his work is in the permanent collection of the Illinois Holocaust Museum. Sosna, who received an MFA in 2009 from Brooklyn College, City University of New York has exhibited in group shows in New York and San Francisco.
[Image: Huey Crowley "Goofy's Concern" (2012) Acrylic on canvas, 42" x 52"]
Media
Schedule
from September 06, 2012 to October 04, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-09-06 from 18:00 to 20:00