“Three’s Company” Exhibition
Mrs.
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Mrs. presents Three’s Company, with works by Rebecca Morgan, Mark Mulroney and Montgomery Perry Smith. As the title implies, the artists included utilize similar devices and share commonalities throughout their practices aligning with the popular comedy-of-errors sitcom, Three’s Company; which celebrated the clashing personalities, everyday misunderstandings and sexual tensions of a cast of unlikely roommates.
In the program’s first episode, which aired on ABC in 1977, roommates Janet Wood and Chrissy Snow unexpectedly find stranger, Jack Tripper passed out in their bathtub after a lively and drunken party. In need of a new roommate, the women hastily offer him a space in the apartment, using the pretense that Jack (who is straight) is homosexual, to circumvent the landlord Stanley Roper’s intolerance for co-ed living situations.
The humor in Three’s Company, is primarily based on farce and overt innuendo, as many of the series’ running jokes are established upon Jack’s fictitious sexual orientation. Physical comedy punctuates the trio’s hare-brained schemes to remedy their drama-filled situations and self-created comedic dilemmas. In parallel, Morgan, Mulroney and Smith’s works perform as stand-ins for the sitcom’s characters. Not one identifying as a specific role, but each encompassing improbable personalities, comedic gestures and satiric portrayals.
Hailing from Central Pennsylvania, Rebecca Morgan’s paintings, drawings and ceramics emanate from stereotypes of rural Appalachia. Humorous, benevolent (and savage at turns) her characters touch on truths about poverty, addiction, off-the-grid living, as well as idealizations of uncultured country life. Stylistically, Morgan embraces hyper-detailed naturalism, influenced by Dutch painters such as Memling, Brueghel, and Van Eyck, as well as absurd, repulsive caricatures suggestive of underground artists such as R.Crumb and Tom of Finland. As an on-and-off-again New Yorker, Morgan represents the ultimate insider/outsider point-of view, embracing and critically distancing herself from her origins.
Mark Mulroney’s works stem from a familiar nostalgia for comic books and Saturday morning cartoons. Situated between humor and art, pop culture and silliness, Mulroney’s work is playful, comical and exquisitely crafted. In these most recent works, Mulroney has simplified comic book covers and scenes from such, down to their most rudimentary and abstracted forms and colors. Effie Bowen in 2013 stated, “Mulroney provides levity in an art universe choking with sober academia. Depending on your mental state at the time, any piece could cause an onslaught of laughter or of tears. His playful inventiveness acts as a flashback to youthful fantasies fraught with appendageal obsessions and a reveling in cartoon gore and guts… his art conjures memories of a less media driven existence, while providing twisted amusement.”
Montgomery Perry Smith’s work combines portions of domestic furniture and fixtures, decorative textiles and fake flowers in the creation of wall mounted and suspended sculptures. His over embellished forms are often orifice, portal, flower and reliquary at once, resulting in objects that hover between performance, sci-fi beast, rare organic growths and sexual innuendo.
Rebecca Morgan received a BA from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania and her MFA from Pratt Institute, NY. She is the recipient of a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, The Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts Residency, a Vermont Studio Center full fellowship, and the George Rickey Residency at Yaddo. Exhibitions include Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada, Asya Geisberg, NY Invisible Exports, NY, Honey Ramka, NY, Arts KC, MO, Booth Gallery, NY, Gasser Grunert Gallery, NY, Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles, CA and Vox Populi Gallery, PA among others.
Mark Mulroney received a BFA from San Diego State University and an MFA in Studio Arts from University of California at Santa Barbara. Recent exhibitions include Park Life Gallery, CA, Ampersand Gallery, OR, CG2 Gallery, TN, Mixed Greens, NY, Joshua Liner, NY, EverGold, CA, Left Field Gallery, CA and Slow Culture, CA. This is his first time exhibiting with Mrs. Mulroney lives and works in Syracuse, NY.
Montgomery Perry Smith is a sculptor and performance artist residing in Brooklyn, NY. He holds a BFA with a focus on Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Exhibitions include, The Bureau of General Services - Queer Division, NY, Roots and Culture, IL, Halsted Gallery, IL, Grace Exhibition Space, NY, David B. Smith Gallery, CO, among others. Smith is also a well known drag performer under the stage name Patti Spliff.
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Schedule
from June 10, 2017 to July 29, 2017
Closed July 1 - July 7 for Independence Day, re-opens Saturday, July 8, 12 - 4pm. By appointment only in August.