Vicki Khuzami, Daena Title, Stephen Spiller and Robert Ludwig Exhibition
Carter Burden Gallery
This event has ended.
Carter Burden Gallery presents three new exhibitions: Women of Absurdia in the East Gallery featuring Vicki Khuzami and Daena Title, Street Scenes in the West Gallery featuring Stephen Spiller, and On the Wall featuring Robert Ludwig.
In Women of Absurdia, Vicki Khuzami presents paintings of scenes within imaginary suburban homes by the use of vintage dollhouses in her most recent series, Telenovelas Suburbia. A lifelong collector of pop culture commodities, Khuzami’s work is inspired by vintage kitsch, which includes anime dolls, action figures, dollhouses, and bodybuilding magazines. She arranges pulp fiction inspired scenes within vintage dollhouses. Inspired by film noir, and the works of David Lynch, Wes Anderson, and Todd Solondz, she stages, lights, and photographs her cast of characters within vintage dollhouse sets. Next she distorts the colors by computer and manipulates them one final time on canvas. Khuzami states, “What excites me is exploring socio-psychological taboos, societal foibles and machinations from a voyeuristic perspective by use of the dollhouses.”
In On the Wall Robert Ludwig presents Indian Summer a large-scale painting utilizing charcoal and acrylic to create a colorful and gestural installation. Contrary to Ludwig’s signature style of horizontal and vertical lines that create simple geometric divisions, which are then filled with rich yet subtle monochromatic colors, the installation will have expressive marks and motion unconfined to the grid structure. The suggested geometric format, combined with tonal and spatial interplay, and the vigorous hand of the artist, create an optical ambiguity between the open and closed space that engages the viewer in a delicate visual balance.
In his second solo exhibition at Carter Burden Gallery, Stephen Spiller presents photographs in the exhibition Street Scenes. The pieces involve social, political, and cultural themes that offer a window into understanding how contemporary life is shaped and lived. He explores those themes by focusing on drivers of individual passions as well as on manifestations of such passion originating from unstated, suppressed, or otherwise hidden events. Spiller states, “Understanding who we are as individuals in large measure determines how we behave collectively as a society. My work is documentary as well as conceptual and offers both social and political commentary.”
In Women of Absurdia Daena Title presents vibrant paintings from her current series Is This A Dagger?, which focuses on pageant contestants and the competitions that offer empowerment, but simultaneously, exploitation. The series title references Macbeth’s famous soliloquy Is this a dagger I see before me?. Like Macbeth, who, about to murder his way to power, finds himself haunted by the means he must use to acquire it, Title questions the means women use to achieve their power. These paintings speak to that on-going internal debate. Title’s works focus on the powerfully seductive force of modern female icons and the line between beauty and distortion. Her colorist, expressionist paintings reflect the on going love/hate relationship between women, societal standards, and self-esteem.
Media
Schedule
from September 07, 2017 to September 28, 2017
Opening Reception on 2017-09-07 from 18:00 to 20:00