“Meddwl” Exhibition
The Parlour Art Gallery
This event has ended.
The Parlour Bushwick presents “Meddwl”, featuring work by Jonathan Cowan, Christopher Manning, Jessica Langley, and Christopher Dunlap
Taking a reflective approach to image-making the artists in the exhibition entitled “Meddwl”; a Gaelic term for thinking, create work that calls for a contemplative gaze. Each coming from a distinct working process whether it is a bonding of two separate art practices, repetition of shape and color, or cataloging and manipulating that which they see in nature their process allows them to visualize and come to understand their relationship to the natural world. Through metaphor, memory, and daily life they create a visual experience that takes time to process.
Jonathan Cowan’s process consists of landscape painting, chemical transfers, and sewing tantric-like shapes onto a canvas. His work is a melding of different art genres and practices. His images of sublime landscapes coupled with shapes sewn onto the canvas offer a quiet reflection on the natural world, a consideration of the material surface and create a decontextualized narrative.
Flowers floating in a stormy landscape, a face covered in thread; Christopher Manning’s Polaroid’s are a meditation on the passage of time and a cataloging of what he sees in nature. The way he manipulates and transforms the photos acts as a way of addressing his emotional state while recording these images.
Jessica Langley uses nature and the landscape as source material to experiment with alternate techniques of making an image and a metaphor for that, which cannot be controlled. In her video collage “Flat Screens 1-111” she creates wreaths that change with the season. The symbol of the wreath as a finite entity that is subject to the undisciplined effects of nature becomes an introspective tool and a transport device that moves you through the passage of time as well as different psychological states.
Dunlap’s paintings are broken up patterns of shape and color. The repetition of the abstracted forms creates different interpretations of their meaning, and the soft edges and brushed layers of color allow the viewer to move through the painting and experience different spatial relationships. In his painting “HLT#1” the color is divided into five sections. The forms are similar in construction and seem to radiate out from the center of the painting to the edge of the canvas ending in square-like shapes. The overall construction and the individual forms themselves create various interpretations; an explosion, dialogue boxes, a map, a color wheel. These changing analogies happen over time as you keep looking.
Media
Schedule
from April 29, 2016 to May 29, 2016
Opening Reception on 2016-04-29 from 18:00 to 21:00