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During the month of April 2010, Blackfish Gallery will host an exhibition of new work by Rosemary Powelson and Theresa Redinger. The exhibit opens Tuesday, March 30th and continues through Saturday, May 1st. An opening reception will be held on First Thursday, April 1st from 6-9 pm at the gallery.
Rosemary Powelson has been profoundly influenced by her husband’s near fatal heart attack in 2006 and set out to know everything she could about the human heart by researching, dissecting and observing coronary bypass surgery. She says, “This is exciting science, but I am more interested in what lies inside our hearts and the places where our hearts can meet”. Her exhibit is titled Heartland.
Powelson writes, “Hearts are tethered to bypass machines during surgery, and nourished, yet suspended, while those of us in the waiting room free float in the unknown. This state of being betwixt and between haunts me, and influences the compositions and psychological space in my work. A recent road trip through America’s Heartland where I was born and raised also inspires this work. I don’t really know where our souls live, but after this pilgrimage back to my 'home place,' I agree with the mythology that suggests they are next to and akin to our hearts”.
“Clearly this work is about my personal life, but I love process, and collage is my dominant technique. I am intrigued by the similarity between coronary bypass surgery and collage – cutting and borrowing from one source and adding it into a new environment to create a fresh, alternative meaning”. She layers her own photographs, vintage family photos, images from books, maps, found papers, fabric, paint and drawing materials and uses repetition, manipulation, interruption and/or erasure to create suspended time and space.
Theresa Redinger’s exhibit is titled Anyone, Everyone, No One and is a mixed media installation of three interconnected environments. These environments will incorporate the subtleties of reflection to change the viewer's perception and direction of vision. It includes both objects and space manipulation. Several of the works use a surface that alternates between transparency and reflection which builds on work that she has been doing with contact paper and its visual subtleties.
Conceptually Redinger has previously worked with the idea of the seen and unseen, as well as the peripheral glimpse. She has expressed interest in boundaries between the seen and unseen, the acknowledged and denied, attention and negligence, intention and oblivion. She says, “I want to cross these boundaries to explore the way we see ourselves and those around us at any given moment”.
Recently her work utilizes in material and representation the urban environment she spends most of her days. However, the time she spends in nature influences the questions she has while moving through the visual stimulus of the city. “Why do we set up our visual world this way?" “What do we ignore but not alleviate?"
Redinger writes, “Years ago I stopped believing in opposites because I perceived a large gap existing between the poles. Now I explore the possibility of the space between being more of a boundary and often a fuzzy, transmutable one”.
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Backroom: Carol Benson
Fish Bowl 1: Sandy Roumagoux
Fish Bowl 2: "Meadow Starts With P" |
www.andrew-j-peterson.com
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