Exhibitions

Current Exhibition

Sara Jessie Kane | Sharon Thomas | Edwina Ashton

14 August – 19 September 2010
via Roma 22, Cortona

Sharon Thomas Fruits of the Forest, 2006, Charcoal on paper, 140×100 cm

ENGLISH

The works of Sharon Thomas, Sara Jessie Kane and Edwina Ashton presented in this exhibition explore ambiguous territories balanced between the mundane and the obsessions of ritual.

Sharon Thomas’s Coffee Morning Series take us on a disconcerting journey through the artist’s Fairy Hill landscapes in which a young girl – perhaps a metaphor for the artist herself – is both witness, spectator and occasionally participant, in a sequence of obsessively played out, male dominated rituals. By contrast the abstract forms of Sara Jessie Kane’s paintings present us with fractured scenarios of a psychological intensity that border on representation. By simultaneously hiding and revealing her subject, the ambiguity of our role as viewers is magnified, to create a precarious condition of uncertainty.

In the video works of Edwina Ashton we are confronted by figures dressed in grotesque costumes reminiscent of animals and insects, at once friendly and frightening: their actions reveal the obsessive rituals of mundane existence, at first comic, giving way to the tragic as the repetition is perpetuated.

With entirely divergent means each artist leads us into conflicted territories in which gender, status and identity are tested and pushed to breaking point. The results, whether frightening or fascinating, demandingly serious or absurdly humorous, disclose surprisingly informative means of perceiving the realities by which we are constantly buffered.

EDWINA ASHTON
Edwina Ashton lives and works in London. She obtained her first degree in philosophy at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge before pursuing a year’s Fine Art Foundation at Camberwell College of Art, London and a degree in Fine Art at Goldsmith’s College, London. She has had major solo exhibitions at Arnolfini, Bristol (2003), MoCA, Miami (2004), Peer, London (2005) and Camden Arts Centre, London (2006). Edwina Ashton is also represented by Works|Projects, Bristol. She is currently showing at Tate Britain in the exhibition Rude Britannia: British Comic Art from June-September 2010.

SARA JESSIE KANE
Sara Jessie Kane lives and works in Long Island City, New York. She studied at Parsons School of Design, Paris and at the Rhode Island School of Design. She has exhibited regularly in Europe and America since 1994 and has had solo exhibitions at: Velocity Gallery, Williamsburgh, Brooklyn (1998) and at Galerie Michael Nef, Frankfurt-am-Main (2001). She has been in group shows at: Galerie Van Gelder, Amsterdam (1994); Here, New York (1995); Velocity Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn (1998); Galerie Michael Neff, Frankfurt-am-Main (2000); Thomas Erben Gallery, New York (2000); Chase Freedman Gallery, West Hartford, CT (2001); ATM Gallery, New York (2002); KS Art, New York (2004); Spruth Magers Projekte, Munich (2004); Exit Art, New York (2005); Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY (2007); Big and Small Casual Gallery, Long Island City, NY (2010) and Both Sides of the Pulaski, project by Andrea Salerno, Long Island City, NY (2010).

SHARON THOMAS
Sharon Thomas lives and works in Glasgow. She obtained her degree from Glasgow School of Art (2001) and her Masters from the New York Academy of Art (2004); she received the Sainsbury Scholarship from the British School at Rome in 2005. Her studies were supported by the Villore Scholarship (2001) and by the Sainsbury Scholarship (2002-2005). She has had Solo exhibitions at the Museet for Religious Kunst, Denmark (2009) and North Wall Gallery, Oxford (2009). She has participated in several group exhibitions, at: Spike Gallery, New York (2004); Times Square Gallery, New York (2005); Transmission, Glasgow (2005); Roger Miller Gallery, New York (2005); Cornerhouse, Manchester (2006); British School at Rome (2006); PPOW Gallery, New York (2006); Gi:Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (2008); Air Gallery, DUMBO, New York (2009).

ITALIANO

I lavori di Sharon Thomas, Sara Jessie Kane e Edwina Ashton presentati in questa mostra esaminano territori ambigui in bilico tra l’ordinario e le ossessioni rituali del giornaliero.

Nella Coffee Morning Series di Sharon Thomas veniamo trasportati nel sconcertante paesaggio fantastico dell’artista: Fairy Hill. Qui una bambina protagonista – forse una metafora per l’artista stessa – è sia testimone e spettatrice, che partecipante ad una sequenza di bizzarri rituali dominati da uomini.

A contrasto, le forme astratte dei dipinti di Sara Jessie Kane ci presentano con scenari fratturati d’intensità psicologica, confinanti sulla rappresentazione. Simultaneamente rivelando e nascondendo il suo soggetto, l’ambiguità della nostra posizione di spettatore viene amplificata per creare una precaria condizione d’incertezza.

Nei lavori su video di Edwina Ashton ci troviamo di fronte ad una sequenza di figure vestite di grotteschi costumi ricordanti le forme di animali ed insetti, al contempo simpatici e spaventosi: le loro azioni rivelano gl’ossessivi rituali della ordinaria esistenza giornaliera; essi sono da prima comici, cedendo poi al tragico con la perpetuazione della ripetizione.

Con mezzi assolutamente divergenti ciascuno degli artisti ci trasporta in confittati territori, in cui le nostre idee d’identità, di genere e di gerarchia vengono provate e spinte al limite. I risultati, se terrificanti o affascinanti, di serietà impegnativa o assurdamente arguti, schiudano un’ informativa gamma di modi di percepire le realtà che costantemente ci circondano.

EDWINA ASHTON
Edwina Ashton vive e lavora a Londra. Ha ottenuto la sua prima laurea in filosofia a Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge prima di seguire un anno di Fine Art Foundation a Camberwell College of Art per poi eseguire la seconda laurea in arte a Goldsmiths College, Londra. Ashton ha avuto mostre personali ad Arnolfini, Bristol (2003), MoCA, Miami (2004), Peer, Londra (2005) e Camden Arts Centre, Londra (2006); in Inghilterra è rappresentata da Works|Projects, Bristol. Il lavoro di Ashton è attualmente esposto a Tate Britain nella mostra: Rude Britannia: British Comic Art da giugno a settembre 2010.

SARA JESSIE KANE
Sara Jessie Kane vive e lavora a Long Island City, New York ha studiato a Parsons School of Design, Parigi e a Rhode Island School of Design. Ha esibito regolarmente in Europa e negli Stati Uniti dal 1994 e ha avuto mostre personali alla Velocity Gallery, Williamsburgh, Brooklyn (1998) e alla Galerie Michael Nef, Frankfurt-am-Main (2001). Ha partecipato in mostre collettive a: Galerie Van Gelder, Amsterdam (1994); Here, New York (1995); Velocity Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn (1998); Galerie Michael Neff, Frankfurt-am-Main (2000); Thomas Erben Gallery, New York (2000); Chase Freedman Gallery, West Hartford, CT (2001); ATM Gallery, New York (2002); KS Art, New York (2004); Spruth Magers Projekte, Munich (2004); Exit Art, New York (2005); Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY (2007); Big and Small Casual Gallery, Long Island City, NY (2010) and Both Sides of the Pulaski, progetto di Andrea Salerno, Long Island City, NY (2010).

SHARON THOMAS
Sharon Thomas vive e lavora a Glasgow. Ha ottenuto la laurea alla Glasgow School of Art (2001) e il Masters dalla New York Academy of Art (2004); ha ricevuto la Sainsbury Scholarship dalla British School at Rome nel 2005. I suoi studi sono stati sostenuti dalle seguenti borse: la Villore Scholarship (2001) e dalla Sainsbury Scholarship (2002-2005). Ha avuto mostre personali alla Museet for Religious Kunst, Danimarca (2009) e alla North Wall Gallery, Oxford (2009). Ha partecipato a varie mostre collettive: Spike Gallery, New York (2004); Times Square Gallery, New York (2005); Transmission, Glasgow (2005); Roger Miller Gallery, New York (2005); Cornerhouse, Manchester (2006); British School at Rome (2006); PPOW Gallery, New York (2006); Gi:Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (2008); Air Gallery, DUMBO, New York (2009).

Future Exhibitions

To be announced

Past Exhibitions

Giacinto Occhionero | Jennifer Graber | Phyllis Baldino

Dissennato Paesaggio

19 June – 1st August 2010 | Extended until 8 August 2010 – Prolungato fino al 8 Agosto 2010
via Roma 22, Cortona

For thirsty people, 2008, aerosol paint on plexiglas, 150×200 cm

English

The work of the artists presented in this exhibition, are united by two intentions: the will to appropriate and reinterpret works by major artists of the past and the choice to engage with and question received ideas about our natural environment. Stylistically divergent, each of the three artists in the show lead us towards different areas of perception. By appealing to art works of the past, each artist casts his or her work in an historic present whereby their contemporary vision is juxtaposed with that of their predecessors’ intentions. Through the works presented here we are invited to look at the past and the contemporary present simultaneously. In doing so we recognise how each artist critiques received ideas to generate new modes of reception that are philosophically provocative.

In her video work Absence is Present: Dead Nature in the Dark Phyllis Baldino records in a single take, stolen while the museum guards were turned away, her experience of viewing André Derain’s still life painting Nature morte sur fond noir. In post-production she worked into her brief video footage the blind-spot that appeared after she underwent open-heart surgery a year ago. Having this blind spot close to the center of her vision, it follows her wherever she goes. This absence in her sight is perpetually present: her work efficiently reminds us how even an apparently objective activity like looking is in-fact entirely subjective and all that can be objective is the articulation of that experience.

In the drawings of Jennifer Graber we are taken into other regions. Stylistically Graber’s starting points may be recognised in the works of Symbolist painter Odilon Redon and Abstract Expressionist Arshile Gorky, however her pictorial intentions diverge from theirs. By referencing nature directly, Graber’s work leads us into a territory of metaphore. The abraded surfaces of her drawings recall the appearance of micro-bio-organisms seen under the microscope or growths such as lichens and moulds found in nature, yet her pictorial vision filters and transforms the natural form into powerful images bearing universal meaning: by revealing the beauty in decay Graber eloquently critiques the present.

The paintings of Giacinto Occhionero reveal a rewarding fabric of cultural references: read in unison, they unfold potent, often provocative comments on the present. The paintings presented here are concerned with man’s relationship to his natural surroundings. In the complex Spacebury, Occhionero appropriates John Constable’s iconic painting of Salisbury Cathedral to narrate a Darwinian tale of man’s progress. In the foreground we recognise the Apes from Kubrick’s film 2001 a Space Odyssey, while in the background, the spire of the cathedral, (a major feat of engineering that in c.1250 when it was built, was one of the tallest structures celebrating God in the western world) is turned into a launch tower for the Space Shuttle – perhaps the greatest science-engineering achievement of the twentieth century. Occhionero provides the key to this visual narrative in the painting’s pendent: here the cathedral is erased from Constable’s composition and replaced with a football pitch. A similarly ironic critique bears down on the artist’s comic representation of the philosopher Descartes as a suburban gardener seated on his lawnmower as if to suggest the consumer product he rides is the ultimate fruit of his revolutionary philosophy in our twenty-first century present.

Phyllis Baldino

Phyllis Baldino lives and works in New York. She is currently in the exhibition Do/Redo/Undo at Wiels, in Brussels (05.08-06.06.2010). Baldino is included in the section that features ‘45 Years of Performance Video from EAI’ which was also at PS1 in New York (01.11.2009-26.04.2010).

Jennifer Graber

Jennifer Graber lives and works in Boston, she has recently been in the group show From the Sublime to the Ridiculous organised by TFA, Athens (15.11.09-02.12.2009)

Giacinto Occhionero

Giacinto Occhionero lives and works in Rome. He has recently had the solo exhibition Nafta & Dafne at Studio d’Arte Pino Casagrande, Rome (12.2009-02.2010)

Italiano

l lavori degli artisti presentati in mostra sono uniti da due intenzioni: la voglia di appropriare e confrontarsi con opere di alcuni dei maggiori artisti del passato e la scelta di impegnarsi con, e di interrogare idee accettate riguardanti il nostro ambiente. Stilisticamente diversi, ciascuno degli artisti in mostra ci porta verso differenti zone di percezione. Mediante l’appello ad opere d’arte del passato, ogni artista propone il proprio lavoro in un presente storico nella quale la loro visione contemporanea entra in paragone con le intenzioni dei loro predecessori. Tramite i lavori presentati siamo quindi invitati a vedere il passato ed il presente contemporaneo simultaneamente. Così facendo, riconosciamo come ciascun artista commenta idee accettate per generare nuove forme di comprensione filosoficamente provocative.

Nel suo lavoro su video Absence is Present: Dead Nature in the Dark Phyllis Baldino registra in un’unica ripresa, rubata mentre non guardavano le guardie del museo, la sua esperienza di fronte alla natura morta di André Derain Nature morte sur fond noir. In post-produzione ha introdotto nella sua breve video ripresa la macchia cieca nella vista che è apparso dopo aver subito un intervento chirurgico al cuore l’ anno scorso. Questa macchia cieca, al centro della sua vista la segue ovunque ed e quindi una mancanza perpetuamente presente nella sua vista: il suo lavoro ci ricorda con efficienza come un’attività apparentemente oggettiva come l’atto di guardare è invece interamente soggettivo e che l’unica cosa che può essere resa oggettiva è l’articolazione di un’esperienza.

Nei disegni di Jennifer Graber siamo portati in altri luoghi Stilisticamente possiamo trovare i punti di partenza del lavoro di Graber nelle opere simboliste di Odilon Redon ed in quelle astratte di Arshile Gorky, comunque le sue intenzioni divergono dalle loro. Facendo riferimento diretto alla natura, Graber ci introduce in un territorio metaforico. Le superfici usurate dei suoi disegni ricordano l’apparenza di organismi visti sotto il microscopio o di lichene e muffe trovate nella natura, ma la sua visione pittorica filtra e trasfigura queste forme naturali in potenti immagini a sostegno di significati universali: nel rivelare la bellezza nel degrado Graber eloquentemente commenta il nostro presente.

I dipinti di Giacinto Occhionero rivelano una premiante stoffa di riferimenti culturali: letti in sintonia, spiegano un potente, frequentemente provocativo, commento sul presente. I dipinti in mostra concernono le relazioni tra l’uomo e la natura. Nel complesso Spacebury Occhionero si appropria del iconico dipinto di John Constable della cattedrale di Salisbury per commentare un racconto Darwiniano del progresso umano. Nel primo piano della sua tavola trasparente riconosciamo le scimmie dal film 2001 a Space Odyssey di Kubrick. Sullo sfondo, la torre a forma d’ago della cattedrale (al tempo della sua costruzione nel 1250 circa, una delle strutture in celebrazione di Dio più alte del mondo occidentale, e un trionfo d’ ingegneria) è trasformata in torre di lancio per lo Space Shuttle – forse il più importante ottenimento di ingegneria scientifica del ventesimo secolo. Occhionero offre la chiave di lettura del suo dipinto attraverso il pendente: qui la cattedrale è del tutto rimossa dalla composizione di Constable e rimpiazzata da un campo di calcio. Una simile ironia critica informa la rappresentazione comica fatta dal artista del filosofo Cartesio, il quale presentato nei panni di un medio borghese di periferia a bordo del suo taglia erba, pare suggerire che il prodotto di consumo che cavalca è il frutto massimo, nel nostro ventunesimo secolo, del grande pensiero rivoluzionario del filosofo.

Phyllis Baldino

Phyllis Baldino vive e lavora a New York, è attualmente nella mostra Do / Redo / Undo a Wiels, Brussels (08.05 – 06.06. 2010). Baldino è inclusa nella sezione ‘45 Years of Performance Video from EAI’ che è stata presentata a PS1 New York (01.11.2009 – 26.04.2010).

Jennifer Graber

Jennifer Graber vive e lavora a Boston, è recentemente stata nella mostra collettiva From the Sublime to the Ridiculous a cura di TFA, Atene (15.11.09-02.12.2009)

Giacinto Occhionero

Giacinto Occhionero vive e lavora a Roma. Recentemente ha avuto la mostra personale Nafta & Dafne a Studio d’Arte Pino Casagrande, Roma (12.2009-02.2010)

Sharon Thomas | Sara Jessie Kane

12 May – 14 June 2010
Solonos 42, Athens

Sara Jessie Kane Mist, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 51×41 cm

The contrasting styles of Sharon Thomas and Sara Jessie Kane reveal the complimentary nature of their objectives. Thomas’s Coffee Morning Series take us on a disconcerting journey through the artist’s Fairy Hill landscapes in which a young girl – perhaps a metaphor for the artist herself – is both witness, spectator and occasionally participant, in a sequence of obsessively played out, male dominated rituals. By contrast the abstractions of Sara Jessie Kane present us with scenarios of a psychological intensity that borders on representation. With entirely divergent means both artists lead us into conflicted territories in which gender, status and identity are tested and pushed to breaking point. The results, whether frightening or fascinating, demandingly serious or absurdly humorous, disclose surprisingly informative means of perceiving the realities by which we are constantly buffered.

Group Show

16th April – 15 June 2010
via Roma 22, Cortona

Edwina Ashton Prepared for everything, 2008, coloured pencil & pen on paper, 14×21 cm

This exhibition presents a selection of work by nine of our gallery’s international artists. It divides into two sections: in the large room are works connected by landscape and the natural environment and in the long room are works related by architecture and the urban environment. The video work in the entrance atrium, unites these themes exploring the movement of people through an ancient building: by breaking the boundaries between figuration and abstraction it highlights the two stylistic idioms present throughout this display.

Edwina Ashton
Ashton’s drawings, studies closely related to her video works, are populated by insect and bird-like creatures, at times grotesque, frequently comic, their actions and gestures reveal the ineffectual hopes and mundane failures of human behavior.

Phyllis Baldino
Using humour, and implied narrativity, often informed by scientific or philosophical principles, Baldino questions the meaning of every-day actions. In the Out of Focus Everything video series, which Baldino has described as drawings, she explores what existence in eleven dimensions might look like, achieving highly abstracted results.

Jennifer Graber
Haunting and ambiguous, these images carry the viewer’s imagination into contradictory areas of perception. Graber states that with them she has sought to reveal: Things that are unseen and only imagined, the beauty in rot and decay, the ugliness in beauty’.

Scott Grodesky
Grodesky investigates in his paintings the impossible spaces of what he has called ‘Reverse Perspective’ whereby he creates ‘a descriptive space where objects are larger the further away they are from the viewer.’ In doing so he draws our attention to the full meaning of perspective. That is, not only the mathematical construct for representing the world, but also the notion that perspective is a review of the past from the present.

Sara Kane
Sara Kane’s paintings are representations, but they are not always representational. They are abstractions, but they are not always abstract. Such ambiguous boundaries in Kane’s work are unsettling provoking a tension of uncertainty.

Giacinto Occhionero
The work of Occhionero explores the intricate relationship between man and nature. With Skywalk, he creates an ironic visual pun. He transforms the Skywalk platform (a recently built tourist attraction) overlooking the majestic landscape of the Grand Canyon into a basketball net: a comic metaphor that captures the essence of our hopes for life, while revealing their insistent banality.

Luca Padroni
The formal construction of Padroni’s images projects a powerful sense of motion, through impossible architectural spaces. The poetic of dynamism and light in these paintings, their geometric severity, conspire to suggest the utopian condition of an ideal city.

Maria Papadimitriou
Underpinning the work of Maria Papadimitriou is the will to reconsider the role of art in contemporary society as a means to investigate notions of individual and collective identity. By predominantly using ephemeral or reproducible media she undermines received ideas about the ‘unique’ status of the art object.

Sharon Thomas
The work of British painter Sharon Thomas applies traditional methods of representation, landscape and figuration, to comment on issues of class and identity in contemporary society. This method of stylistic appropriation is used as a means to identify and comment on received notions of identity in past and present society.

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

15th November – 2nd December 2009
18 Mnisikleous & Diogenous Street, Plaka, Athens

Edwina Ashton (UK) Phyllis Baldino (USA) Anne Sofie Bird Møller (Denmark) Paul Desborough (UK) Jennifer Graber (USA) Scott Grodesky (USA) Sara Kane (USA) DeAnna Maganias (Greece) Kirsi Mikkola (Finland) Giacinto Occhionero (Italy) Luca Padroni (Italy) Maria Papadimitriou (Greece) Sharon Thomas (UK) Nicola Tyson (UK)

‘From the sublime to the ridiculous … there is but one step.’ This now famous phrase, was adapted by Napoleon from the words of the Englishman Thomas Paine, one of the founding fathers of the Unites States, who observed in his book, The Age of Reason (1793) that: ‘The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately’. In this book, the radical political theorist applied enlightenment principles of logical methodology to contest the doctrinal orthodoxy of biblical authorship. In doing so he demonstrated how the subject matter of his analysis, intended to ‘raise thoughts’ and encourage virtue, could, viewed in the light of reason be understood in the opposite terms too. The popular success of this controversial work among supporters of the American Revolution, eventually led the phrase to be adopted in vernacular language to describe any process tying the actions of people, their reputation and the hazardous nature of fortune, in time’s turn of events. In this context however, fortune is not an entirely irrational force rather it is a mirror of prevailing opinion. It is in this sense that Paine’s idea, the title of our exhibition, concerns us.

Thomas Paine’s phrase was completed with the words: ‘One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again’. He thereby shifted emphasis away from the simplistic question: ‘what is sublime or ridiculous?’ to instead highlight the very similar nature of these two conditions and the mutable role reception plays in defining them. This quality of changeability in definition, administered by opinion over time, remains singularly resonant as a way of looking in the present.

Every human action is potentially ridiculous or sublime – one might say that what is sublime contains the ridiculous; what is ridiculous contains the sublime and what is neither contains elements of both – anything we undertake to do then, contains the seed of both possible extremes. These extremes hang like weights in the scale of fortune. And fortune may be understood as the mirror of the critical-mass of opinion, capable of deciding the scale’s tipping-point.

Where a mundane action, like house-cleaning or putting on a suit and going to work, may not seem to necessitate an opinion, the action of an artist, a writer, poet or composer (indeed any creative action) actively seeks the response of opinion in its audience. The action thereby becomes the mirror of the audience, while the audience’s response or opinion has the capacity to decide the fortune of the creative action.

We may then say that anything that generates an opinion is a mirror of the opinion maker. Here we find an engaging paradox. Is it the creative action or the audience’s response that is the opinion maker?

This grey-area is interesting because it concerns communication and its correlative, understanding. The creative action is performed for the purpose of communication but it is understanding that generates a response in the audience. What the mirror of opinion might call sublime or ridiculous, two vastly divergent positions separated by a hair’s breadth, is then the product of the interface between communication and understanding.

Rather than seeking to provoke polarised responses, the selection of work by the twelve artists presented in this exhibition, operate in the grey-area between the maker and the audience. In different ways each artist uses his or her creative process, as well the end product of ‘the work’ to challenge prevailing opinions. By inviting the audience to perceive and choose from various possible territories of understanding, our ‘interpretations’ – our attempt to access these works – draw us into surprising processes of (self) recognition.

Working in eight different cities in six countries, many of the artists in this exhibition, despite the restrictions of physical distance separating them, know each other well. The network of connections that unites them reflects the increasingly international nature of contemporary culture. Each of these artists work in different styles and media, ranging from figuration to abstraction and video to collage, via painting and sculpture. Keenly aware of their production as part of an on-going tradition of western art, their practice dialogues with, develops and challenges the many creative languages codified in the twentieth century and earlier ages. By adopting and adapting sometimes-familiar visual languages that on occasion are pushed to their formal limit to break new ground, they find means to express concerns of our present. These concerns, the content of each artist’s work and the manner in which they are communicated, is where interesting areas of over-lap are to be found.

Among the artist’s work presented in this exhibition, certain related themes emerge as significant: the nature of repetition that punctuates every-day activity; the ways we relate to our built and natural environments and the role of media imagery representing a ‘virtual’ world are all vital sources of exploration. The works draw us through multiple layers of reaction and understanding. The absurd nature of what is considered serious, or conversely, the serious nature of what may be thought absurd, could be recognised as significant means with which these artists explore the experience of every-day reality.