Press Release - "A Garden or A Grave" by Brett Flanigan and Ellen Rutt
pt.2:LA
A Garden Or A Grave
Brett Flanigan
Ellen Rutt
Opening Reception: February 23rd, 2020 12-8pm
Artist Talk: February 23, 2020 at 4 pm
Showing Through: March 14th, 2020
info@part2gallery.com
818 N. Spring Street, #202
Los Angeles, CA 90012
pt. 2: LA is pleased to present A Garden or A Grave, an exhibition of new works by Brett Flanigan and Ellen Rutt. A Garden or A Grave, the exhibition's title, posits a framework in which to question the future of our planet in the era of ecological collapse and climate change. A grave, a place for decomposition, with time becomes a garden. For this exhibition, both artists focus on the idea of place and how experiences in the outside world are translated through color, form and texture. Each artist has created a type of landscape painting that is non-representational, abstracting their experiences in and with nature. Brett Flanigan approaches the work in this series by reflecting on a specific place or experience, and responding to this meditation by laying down a framework of color and composition that portrays the feeling of each. Utilizing this substructure, he continues his exploration of systems through pattern, probability, logic or repetition. These systems are a way for the artist to navigate a series of informed decisions that result in unpredictable outcomes. This process had led to a broad spectrum of work in varying materials, techniques and styles. Ellen Rutt’s work surrenders to the possibilities and limitations of place in a tender call and response between control and improvisation. Through an abstract lexicon of layered shapes and primary colors, she facilitates conversations between materiality and movement, between place and process. Her site-specific installations, mixed-media paintings, and textiles examine notions of belonging and exclusion in the perceived nature-culture divide in America.
Brett Flanigan (b. 1986, Great Falls, MT) holds a degree in Biology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He works primarily in painting and sculpture. His work has been exhibited in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Portland, Atlanta and Chicago, as well as internationally in Hamburg, Germany and Warsaw, Poland. Flanigan has also completed a number of public artworks, including a mural at the Lilley Museum at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a large scale public sculpture in downtown Oakland. Flanigan lives and works in Oakland, CA.
CV
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2019 Zero Player Game, Part 2 Gallery, Oakland, CA
2017 Bad Order, Athen B Gallery, Oakland, CA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2020 A Garden or a Grave, pt. 2: Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2019 Winter Group Show, Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2019 Social Studies Residency Exhibition, Colusa Arts Council, Colusa, CA
2019 Opening Group Show, Part 2 LA, Los Angeles, CA
2019 Art Market SF, San Francisco, CA
2018 Part 2 Gallery Pop Up, Miami, FL
2018 Juxtapoz Clubhouse, Denver, CO
2018 Interference, Part 2 Gallery, Oakland, CA
2018 New Rave, Affenfaust Gallery, Hamburg, Germany
2017Juxtapoz Clubhouse, Miami, FL
2017 System, Legion, San Francisco, CA
2017 Two Year Anniversary, Athen B Gallery, Oakland, CA
2016Winter Group Exhibition, Athen B Gallery, Oakland, CA
2016 Blade Runner, Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA
2016 Summer Group Show, Hashimoto Contemporary, San Francisco, CA
2016 Local II, Mirus Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2016 Ready, Set, Athen B Gallery, Oakland, CA
2016 Subtle Gaze, Gravity Gallery, Aspen, CO
2015 Tomorrow, Hashimoto Contemporary, San Francisco, CA
2015 Fragmented, Good Mother Gallery, Oakland, CA
2015 Innovative Fine Arts Exhibition, Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA
2015 House Warming, Athen B Gallery, Oakland, CA
2015 Potentially Atemporal, Turpentine, Oakland, CA
2015 New Normal Three, Guerrero Gallery, Oakland, CA
2015 Black, White and Wet Paintings, Open Gallery, Portland, OR
2015 Ballasted Frequencies, Maxwell Colette, Chicago, IL
2015 Tired Hands, Good Mother Gallery, Oakland, CA
2014 Fevers, Turpentine, Oakland, CA
2014 Knotenpunkt, Affenfaust Gallery, Hamburg, Germany
2014 Sympathetic Strings, Frappant Gallery, Hamburg, Germany
2014 Big Wet Paintings, Turpentine, Oakland, CA
2014 Keep Eyes, Adobe Books Backroom, San Francisco, CA
2014 White Forest Noise, LeQuiVive, Oakland, CA
2014 Deluge, Railyard, Portland, OR
2013 Neu Folk, LeQuiVive, Oakland, CA
2013 Metagenesis, Old Crow Gallery, Oakland, CA
2013 Associations, Nelson St Gallery, Atlanta, GA
2012 Mythology of Modernity & Other Details, Subterranean, Berkeley, CA
2012 Geometricks, Gallery Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY
2012 Tangled Up In My Friends, Nelson St Gallery, Atlanta, GA
2012 In Between, Old Crow Gallery, Oakland, CA
2011 Living Walls, The Goat Farm, Atlanta, GA
2011 Weightless, Old Crow Gallery, Oakland, CA
2011 Shut Up I’m Dreaming, Galley Heist, San Francisco, CA
2010 Broken Meter, White Walls, San Francisco, CA
2010 Living Walls, Eyedrum, Atlanta, GA
2009 The Great Outdoors, Artbreak Gallery, New York, NY
SELECTED PUBLIC ARTWORKS
2017 Heron Arts, Public Mural, San Francisco, CA
2016 Uptown/Downtown Association, Public Mural, Oakland, CA
2015 Lilley Museum, Public Mural, Reno, NV
2015 VSCO Artists Initiative Grant, Public Sculpture and Mural, Oakland, CA
2014 V9 Gallery, Public Mural, Warsaw, Poland
2013 Fruitvale BART Station, Public Mural, Oakland, CA
2013 Bushwick Collective, Public Mural, Brooklyn, NY
2013 Art in Public Places, Public Mural, Chicago, IL
2013 LeQuiVive Mural Tour, Series of Public Murals, USA
2012 Welling Court Mural Project, Public Mural, Queens, NY
2011 Living Walls, Public Mural, Atlanta, GA
2010 Living Walls, Public Mural, Atlanta, GA
RESIDENCIES
2019 Social Studies Residency, Colusa, CA
2019 Time Change Generator, Cleveland, OH
2019 Juxtapoz Projects Residency, Jersey City, NJ
2018 Residency KPT, Altwarp, Germany
2014 Residency V9, Warsaw, Poland
Ellen Rutt (b. 1989) is a Detroit-based interdisciplinary artist. Rutt graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan. She has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, The Urban Institute of Contemporary Art Grand Rapids, and has completed murals and installations in locations internationally including France, New York, Canada, and Hawaii. She has been featured in Juxtapoz, Forbes, W Magazine, Alive Magazine, LOAM Magazine, and was recently named one of 24 changemakers in 2020 by Hour Detroit Magazine. Rutt is an active member of Detroit Climate Justice Coalitions and hosts regular low-waste community art builds at her studio in support of climate strikes and other environmental justice initiatives.
We protect that which we care for—when we deepen our connection to a place and its people, we become more invested in the preservation of its ecosystem. In my public murals, site-specific installations, paintings, and wearables, I engage physical spaces to examine how environments create experiences, exploring how those experiences inform connection and identity. My recent “place paintings” are largely works on canvas that are made outside of the studio in a wide range of environments—from forests to deserts, to rural fields, to cities, to the inside of a Walmart, or a dumpster, to a recycling center or an abandoned building. I seek out locations that speak to Western consumption and the perceived nature/culture divide, and then work improvisationally, allowing the weather, architecture, and landscape to dictate the mark making.
I carry raw canvas into the world at large, tracing physical elements and recording textural data. I might wash the canvas in watered down mud or paint, leaving dry brush marks, letting the rain form droplets, or spray painting abstractions as the canvas hangs over a chain link fence. Through this process of rubbing, dragging, and throwing, I surrender to the physical environment, engaging the landscape in conversation in an attempt to illustrate the inseparability of natural and manmade systems. Physical touch is a means to deepen our emotional connection to internal and external ecosystems; joy, anger, and grief register as marks across the surface of the canvas.
The “place paintings” are living, breathing embodiments of our planet in its current imperiled state. From rural Alabama to the lava fields of Hawaii, to Soho Manhattan and freeway underpasses in Detroit, I paint to deconstruct anthropocentric worldviews, drawing deeper connections between places that might initially seem to be culturally and geographically disparate. Adjacent to my exploration of physical contact with the environment are deeper questions examining ownership, boundaries, trespass, and sociopolitical notions of belonging and permission. Sometimes my paintings are gestural and rough, energetic and unresolved, and other times they appear systematic and organized; these tensions reflect the paradoxes that emerge as we navigate between modern society and the natural world in the age of climate change.
- Ellen Rutt, 2020
CV
EDUCATION
2011 Loughborough University, UK
2012 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Distinction, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Magna Cum Laude
SOLO AND TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2020 A Garden or A Grave, Pt.2 Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2019 This Must Be The Place, Playground Detroit, Detroit, MI
2016 Getting in Shape, Inner State Gallery, Detroit, MI
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2020 Future Sun, Heron Arts, San Francisco, CA
2019 Kindred Spirits, Curated by Temple Children, East Hawaii Museum of Contemporary Art, Hilo,HI
2019 Signs Of The Time, Playground Detroit, Detroit, MI
2018 Gala, MoCAD, Detroit, MI
2018 Hell Yes, Playground Detroit, Detroit, MI
2018 One Way Through, Heron Arts, San Francisco, CA
2018 Murals In The Market, 1xRUN, Detroit, MI
2018 Less is More, First Amendment Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 Syncopate, Contre-Temps, Strasbourg, France
2018 The Other Art Fair, Brooklyn, NY
2018 Lately, First Amendment Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 Comm (Unity), Playground Detroit, Detroit
2017 Juxtapoz Clubhouse, Miami, Fl.
2017 Which Way, This Way, First Amendment Gallery, San Francisco
2017 DTW/LAX, Thinkspace Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2016 Alternative Process, David Klein Gallery
2016 The Detroiter, Heron Arts, San Francisco
2016 Friends of Friends, Red Bull House of Art, Detroit
2015 Small Victories, Inner State Gallery (offsite), Detroit
2015 We Have A Dream, Inner State Gallery, Detroit
2013 It’s In The Water, Inner State Gallery, Detroit
PUBLIC ART & SELECTED PROJECTS
2018 Shared Space Studies, Collaboration with Carson Davis Brown at Arcosanti, AZ
2018 I’m Here, Set design and fabrication for Tunde Olaniran’s music video Sun Through The Smoke, Commissioned by the City of Victoria, Canada
2018 Van’s US Open, Huntington Beach, CA
2018 Family Quilt, The Other Art Fair, Brooklyn, NY
2018 Sight Specific, The Belt & Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI
2018 L'esprit D'escalier, Trumbull & Porter, Detroit, MI
2018 Scene & Seen, Grand Rapids, MI
2017 Nothing Is Separate: A Collaboration with Nature, Site-specific installations at the
2017 Temple Children Artist Residency, Hilo, HI
2017 Tile Quilts, Calder Plaza for Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI
2017 Serendipity, Festival Les Escales, St. Nazaire, France
2017 UICA Exit Space, Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI
2017 Brain Storm, Facebook Artist in Residence, Detroit, MI
2016, Detroit Design Festival, creative direction, branding, print and web promotional material for DDF, Detroit, MI
2016 Murals in the Market, branding, print and web promotional material for Murals In The Market festival, Detroit, MI
2016 Lincoln Park Patchwork, light up installation in collaboration with Patrick Ethen for Broder Construction, Chicago, IL.
2016 Patchwork Cleveland, InterUrban Arts, Cleveland, OH
2016 Wythe Hotel, Brooklyn, NY
COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS:
2020 RAAD Lab
2019 Sunrise Movement Detroit
2019 Detroit Climate Strike Coalition
2018 United Community Housing Coalition
RESIDENCIES:
2019 Temple Children, Hilo, HI
2018 Maple Terrace, Brooklyn, NY
2017 Temple Children, Hilo, HI
2013 Red Bull House of Art, Detroit, MI
SELECTED PRESS & PUBLICATIONS
2020 Hour Detroit - Named one of 24 Changemakers in 2020
2020 Street Art Today - Forthcoming
2019 Wmag - October
2019 Juxtapoz - July
2019 Alive Magazine - print- July
2019 LOAM - print- August
2018 Juxtapoz - January
2018 Booooooom - January
2018 Ignant - February
2018 Virtute - February
2018 Polaroid Originals - March
2018 Forbes - March
2018 Gross Magazine - December
pt. 2: is a contemporary art gallery that opened its Oakland location in March of 2018 and its Los Angeles location in October of 2019. We feature monthly exhibitions by emerging and mid-career artists. pt. 2: LA is located at 818 N. Spring Street, #202, near the Chinatown exit of the Metro Gold Line, and has open gallery hours Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Opening receptions at pt.2: are always free and open to the public. To receive a preview of the exhibition please contact info@part2gallery.com.