Press Release - "Interrupting Lines" A Group Exhibition
Press Release - Join us for the opening reception of "Interrupting Lines" a group exhibition opening Saturday, April 14th at 12pm at Part 2 Gallery. The exhibition features to works of David Ryan, Delphine Hennelly, Kyle Vu-Dunn, Lena Gustafson, Nat Meade, Sophie Larrimore, and Woodrow White. The gallery is located at 1523b Webster St. in Downtown Oakland, conveniently located by both 12th and 19th St. Bart Stations. The exhibition is free and open to the public until 11pm. "Interrupting Lines" will be on view Thursday to Saturday 11-6pm until May 4th. To learn receive a preview of the exhibition contact info@part2gallery.com.
David Ryan
The drawings, paintings, and sculptures I make tell a little bit about a lot of stories, loosely attached and often referencing themselves. They consist mostly of personal recent past and some future predictions, which may be actual experiences or the distractions of a rich fantasy life.
It seems as though no matter how much time I put into this task of pinning down what it is I am making, I am only able to generalize or chip away at the edge. I believe that's OK, even a good thing, and probably has something to do with what has attracted and sustained so much attention from me. I believe that any attempt at creating art is a rare opportunity, an opportunity that is usually riddled with frustration and sometimes even soul crushing self-doubt. Still, if I am lucky enough to continue at this task, I would be hard-pressed to think of a better way to spend countless hours.
David Ryan is an artist living and working in the San Antonio district of Oakland, California.
Delphine Hennelly
Delphine Hennelly (b. 1979, Vancouver, B.C. Canada) Delphine received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2002. and her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Visual Arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey in 2017. Delphine recently participated in a three person show at St. Charles Projects in Baltimore, MD and will be participating in an upcoming group show at Mother gallery in Beacon, New York, and a two person show with Milo Moyer-Battick at Harpy Gallery in New Jersey. Delphine’s work has appeared in several publications including The Winter Edition, Issue 6, 2018, Art Maze Mag, and Nut Publication. Her work will also be appearing in the New American Paintings Northeast Issue #134 out sometime late Spring 2018. Delphine is a three time recipient of The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award.
Using the weave of tapestries as an infrastructure from which to form a gestural pattern, I embrace the lenticular effect of the pattern that develops and coincidentally the interlacing quality of a seemingly digitized image. The idea of tapestries and screen technology as apparatus’ for viewing becomes a meaningful aspect of the paintings and provides a lattice, so to speak, from which much of my formal decisions are made. Replacing thread for the brushstroke, it is the parts of the tapestry that are frayed that become interesting to me, the effect of looking at something worn by the ages is a quality I am trying to replicate. I paint breaks in the otherwise overall systematic linear pattern creating an image that becomes digitized, broken up, worn with wear and tear, glitchy. Although the resulting image does not move and shift when viewed at different angles, an allusion to lenticular printing changes the entire depth of field. Furthermore, the painted weave of tapestries lending itself to a digital raster effect or the effect of interlaced video suddenly gives way to an image with a shallow depth of space, implied as though behind a kind of screenal interference. The figure now receding inwards from the surface of the canvas rather than protruding outwards from the surface provides an image that truly embeds itself within the drawing.
My palette is pastel suggesting a playful levity, furthermore, the gendered proclivity pastel colors perpetuate is of interest to me in my wish to subvert such tropes. Flower garlands to decorate but also to act as a foil, - to distract; stones locking a picture plane in place like possible paper weights, a pair of pastoral lovers: all these motifs, along with colors I choose, work in service to formally build a ligature from which to hang the image. Within this framework the use of repetition and decoration, either masking or unmasking, offers a multiplicity of possible interpretations. In a text by Amy Goldin published in Artforum in 1975 titled Patterns, Grids, and Painting; Amy Goldin states: “Pattern is basically antithetical to the iconic image, for the nature of pattern implicitly denies the importance of singularity, purity, and absolute precision.” This quote perfectly exemplifies my interest in using repetitive motifs but more pointedly explains much of the reasoning behind my choice in duplicating the figure. Golden further writes: “to see the same image over and over again in a variety of situations disengages the control of context and erodes meaning.” By playing with repetition I enjoy seeing how far I can subvert the iconic image from it’s singular contextual meaning while retaining some residue of the power an iconic image can hold. Perhaps I am attempting to have my cake and eat it too. None the less, it is the tension that lies in this dichotomy that has become fruitful in my wish to pursue figurative/pictorial inventiveness.
Kyle Vu-Dunn
Vu-Dunn's work encompasses relief sculpture, painting, and drawing. While rooted in autobiography, each seeks universal common ground in its depictions of tender moments of joy or malaise between lovers, friends, or a solitary moment alone. The world of these paintings is one of heightened emotion and languid sensuality, like a winking daydream.
B. 1990, Livonia, MI. Kyle Vu-Dunn holds a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from The Maryland Institute College of Art and in 2011 attended the Option SCIE at La Haute Ecole d'art et de désign de Genève, Switzerland. Solo shows of his work include the upcoming "Swing High, Stoop Low" at Julius Caesar, Chicago (2018), "Leaves Don't Thank the Sun" at Sardine, Brooklyn (2017) and "A Nail In A Cherry Pit" at The Java Project, Brooklyn (2016). His work was also recently included in group exhibitions at Sleep Center (NY, NY), Ground Floor Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), 6 Month Space (NY, NY), All((Most) Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), and Los Ojos (Brooklyn, NY).
Vu-Dunn is a grant recipient of The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (Québec, Canada), NYFA, and has been a resident at the Woodstock Byrdecliffe Guild (Woodstock, NY) and at The Scholastic Atelier Artist in Residence Program (NY, NY). He currently lives and works in Queens, New York.
Lena Gustafson
Lena's recent work uses bright colors and large female figures at the center of each image. She uses repeated visual symbolism such as flags, water, plant life, color, and repeated gestures to communicate different stories within the body. Often times the line that separates the figure from her environment are blurred.
Traditionally the female form has been used as a symbol to indulge others' fantasies, dreams, and fascinations. Lena is interested not in what can be projected onto it, but instead what lies to be awoken within the body itself. She is interested in the idea of body memory and aims to visualize what this would look like if we could see it. Rather than the figure itself it is the stored information within the figure as well as its surroundings that interests Lena. By engaging with the history of representation of the female form, Lena contemplates new narratives for which the female body can understand itself.
Nat Meade
I start with an image: a photograph, something I notice during the day, a scene from movie, often a memory. I make several small studies on paper, basing each study on the previous one as in the game Telephone. I pin the successful studies to the wall and use them as references for the final painting. As with the works on paper, the painting goes through several iterations. I cover the canvas with color, scrape it down and work back into the phantom image. I do this over and over. I reduce and make the forms tangible while zeroing in on the parts that sparked my initial curiosity.
The subjects of my paintings vary from the elevated or beatific, to the buffoonish or absurd. My work deals mainly with male archetypes, and their seemingly elevated but truly frail personage.
A woodcut of Walt Whitman hung prominently in my childhood home. As a child, this simple image, with its triangle nose and beard made of dashes loomed large as both God and Father. This image has influenced my own pared down heads and still life paintings, which are often both aspirational and dumb, specific yet general. The scale of my paintings is small and un-heroic, but the statue-like figures with their long beards and gaping mouths can paradoxically appear monumental. Eyeglasses, cigarettes, boxes or outsized collars serve to humanize and attach the forms to our world.
Sophie Larrimore
I paint dogs, but these are not dog paintings per se; they are a way to explore texture, form, and color relationships. Dogs have been in the work for some time. A seemingly frivolous or retrograde subject and therefore a good starting point. Over time the forms have become more generic and are essentially one of a group of elements I draw from to make compositions which interest me. I tend to take some time to arrive at a finished painting, going back in when I could (maybe should) stop, but that overworking has become part of the process and creates a tension and awkwardness which makes the work interesting. I want to inspire sustained and repeated looking. The most interesting paintings for me (both my own and otherwise) are those I come back to again and again and my experience of them is different with each encounter.
Woodrow White
My paintings deal heavily with moody atmosphere, bright colors and strange light, blurring the lines between dreaming and waking. Filtering visual culture through my own lived experience, I seek to turn the common and mundane into my own intimate, unique take on the world.