Breaking Ground

Breaking Ground, curated by Lauren Ross

Breaking Ground presents emerging artists constructing landscape images in collage and assemblage. Disparate materials are combined in various media and formats, including flat paper collage, sculptural assemblage, and digitally manipulated video. References to landscape exist in each piece, but sometimes take stylized and abstract forms.

Jeff Grant presents Arbor Rig, clusters of tree branches wrapped in yarn that hang from the ceiling. Reminiscent of mobile sculpture or a theater prop that can be raised and lowered, the piece hangs with yarn guidelines that also anchor it to the floor. Debra Hampton displays small compositions on individual light boxes, packaged in portable Plexiglas cases. Each box depicts an abstracted scene in materials such as artificial grass packaged with takeout sushi. The disconcerting garden scene in David Krippendorff’s DVD projection, Beyond the moon… is actually a brief clip from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, looped to repeat, with manipulated sound and color effects. Krippendorff uses this bit of quintessentially American utopian vision to question the nature of fantasy and the familiar. Elissa Levy sews cut photographs of camouflage fabric into symmetrical patterns. Manipulating the shape and color of the camouflage, she distances it from its origin in the simulacrum of nature based on visual comprehension. Jason Paradis’s recent work focuses on the patterns of stars and constellations. Using actual coordinates of stars as a source for his work, the artist depicts abstracted stellar clusters in collaged paper, and maps their path in radiating chalk lines. A miniature tent and forest scene complete the installation’s basis in childhood memories of gazing at the nighttime sky while on outdoor camping trips. Susie Reiss creates “paintings” by attaching pieces of fabric to wood panels. The organic shapes and overlapping colors form painterly compositions of abstracted flowers and terrain. Troy Richards forms a lush bacchanalian scene of flowers, fruit and insects from cut foam, construction paper and other materials adhered to the wall. Gedi Sibony assembles a sculpture from seemingly disparate materials: sewn carpet remnants, an arch of driftwood twigs, and a piece of folded cardboard. This work, resembling an aerial view of a landscape, is based on simple connections, formal tensions and the viewer’s own associations. Austin Thomas shows a selection from her series of “Build Drawings,” collages constructed from found and shaped papers. Similar to the porch and patio-like sculptures which Thomas has been installing in public spaces for the last two years, many of the collages suggest yards and landscaped gardens.

About the curator: Lauren Ross is the Director/Chief Curator of White Columns.

This exhibition runs concurrently with White Room exhibitions by Dan Levenson and Gary Cruz.

Opening reception: Friday September 12, 7 – 9 p.m.
Gallery hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 12 – 6 p.m.

For more information, please contact the gallery.