“Spirited,” “with or without women” and “On the Wall” Exhibitions

Carter Burden Gallery

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Carter Burden Gallery presents three new exhibitions: Spirited in the East Gallery featuring Sue Dean and Barbara Laube; with or without women in the West Gallery featuring a collaborative installation by Elisabeth Jacobsen and Carol Massa; and On the Wall featuring Liz Curtin.

In On the Wall, Liz Curtin presents an installation entitled Celestial Bodies, in which over two thousand vibrant hand cut and hand punched sewn paper circles hang in the space. The kinetic installation mimics the stars and planets of our solar system, brought to earth. Curtin cut the circles from hand-decorated paper she made over the past several years using several techniques. On the opposite wall Curtin shows collages made from the cut out remains of the circles, layering and in some cases stitching the paper together to create dynamic works that echo the circles they came from.

Sue Dean, in her first exhibition at Carter Burden Gallery entitled Spirited, displays mystical and eclectic totem sculptures that reflect Eastern, Western, and tribal influences. She has traveled and lived in different lands throughout the world, motivated since childhood to explore outside the boundaries of cultures. The anthropomorphic totems are formed from various textiles, fragments saved from travels, and found objects. Sue Dean states, “Different sizes and shapes of totems evolve as if from faraway planets, yet they’re like people on earth, distinctive in expression and energy.”

In her first exhibition with Carter Burden Gallery, Barbara Laube presents ethereal impasto oil paintings on canvas with abstract compositions that conjure notions of spirituality, shamanism, and transformation in the exhibition Spirited. With a focus on the materiality of paint, the thick and highly textured surface of the work relies on the viewer’s subconscious to interpret. The exhibition features Laube’s most recent work and takes on an otherworldly quality by marrying Laube’s paintings with titles such as Omega and Portal, with totem sculptures by Sue Dean. Laube describes, “In the end the act of painting and paint itself is first and foremost and has always been my way of making sense of my life, who I am, what I love and what I believe in.”

In the installation With or Without Women, Carol Massa and Elisabeth Jacobsen create an environment through the lens of contemporary social consciousness. Using humble imagery and natural materials the artists offer a vision of a primitive woman not bound by male-centric traditions and expectations. The artists present the strength and traits of these women of the primeval forest, as nurturers and mothers, shaped by the personification of Nature as a female, as a life-giver. Massa and Jacobsen construct this installation to applaud and encourage the present movement of women on the ground, marching, insisting on basic rights for women, gender parity and even Mother Earth in society and culture.