Garvey|Simon is pleased to announce the exhibition, Leavings: The After Images, now on view. This group show focuses on the after-life of objects, offering an alternative lens through which to view images and ephemera as varied as a designer shoebox, a Warhol wig or a worm-eaten branch.
Alan Bray was trained in Florence, Italy and uses the Renaissance painting technique of casein tempera on panel. His paintings of Central Maine capture natural phenomena found in the quirky and oft-abandoned landscapes of his explorations on foot or by kayak. Bray enjoys the curiosities found in nature, which tend to be site specific and peculiar, and most often allude to the previous presence of man.
Janet Fish is known for her large, bold, Realist still life paintings. Among her other favorite subjects are everyday objects, such as clear glassware, either empty or partially filled with liquid. Other subjects include teacups, flower bouquets, textiles with interesting patterns, goldfish, vegetables, and mirrored surfaces. She occasionally includes the human figure in her still lifes. Her work has been characterized as photorealist, although she does not consider herself as such, and also associated with new realism. Elements such as composition and use of color demonstrate her point of view as a painter rather than a photographer.
Margot Glass explores the fragility of communication, and people’s natural drive to find narrative in even the most ordinary of objects. In her Envelopes series, Glass works in watercolor, pencil and silverpoint, using trompe l’oeil to highlight the paper as a still life element. The drawing becomes an object through close compositional cropping and the choice of stiff watercolor board. By omitting text, the artist adds a minimalist element to the vivid representation.
Ray Kass’s mystical works on paper attempt to depict the processes of nature at work instead of a pictorial illustration. “My appreciation of the natural world is for the great variety of texture, light, form and eventful psychology that finds its maximum expression in its manifestations” says the artist. The subdued works in this show possess an amalgam of abstracted elements from nature taken directly from the artist’s stencils created from drawings of bones, bark, shells, and plant material. These are abstract shapes meticulously rendered and re-constituted into a mix that is at once still life, abstraction and landscape.
Linda Lindroth deconstructs and examines objects in an abstract way by photographing them. She finds something with an interesting color, surface or provenance and, with either a camera or flatbed scanner, creates a flattened image of it. In this two-dimensional photographic form, the object takes on an abstract quality with colors and details that invigorate the senses. Elsa, 2012, is created from a collapsed shoebox that originally held a pair of black suede evening sandals designed by Elsa Schiaparelli.
Sandy Litchfield creates imaginary worlds from fragments of memory and remnants of her scrapped and torn watercolors. What is born is her own new geography, history, culture, and ecology. Litchfield uses a wide range of media including collage, paint, photography, and digital prints to create fragmented and abstracted landscapes. Snippets of forest, sunshine, and foliage congeal as places of haunting enchantment or spiritual refuge. In all the work is an inherent tension between the abstract and the representational, which remarks on both physical and psychological intersections of the domestic and the wild.
Julia Randall is in love with drawing, and uses her seductive technique to craft images that subtly challenge assumptions about corporeality, desire, and the natural world. Intersecting sensibilities activate her work; images are simultaneously erotic and humorous, beautiful and repulsive. Although she clearly operates in the realm of fantasy, Randall uses observation-based drawing and hyperrealistic technique to create images that are surreal and suggestive.
Mary Reilly works with both powdered graphite and graphite pencil on paper. The artist memorializes tree carvings or “graffiti” found within the woods of Alley Pond Park, Queens. The imagery in her drawings continues the dialogue Reilly pursues with urban life and nature via the discovery of oft-forgotten, secluded spaces in the parks and other outlying sites within New York City.
Reilly elevates the scarred trees into something timeless. Each carving is different and speaks to its own unique history. Reilly describes walking through the woods as if it were a trip back in time. Reilly creates homage to these anonymous small crimes of passion, which nature seems to have endured without pause.
Almost every [carving] made me imagine the people from the surrounding neighborhoods walking into the park, whether it be kids drinking, smoking and hanging out, or lovers taking a stroll. I found the faceless initials carved on the trees and what might be the story behind them to be most interesting.– Mary Reilly