White Columns Online #11:

“Cloud Memories”

curated by Adrianne Rubenstein

January 23–March 7, 2020 Online
Six roughly rendered yellow flowers with blue stems and leaves against a painterly backdrop with brown, red and black patches.

Karen Barbour
Untitled, 2018.
Oil on paper
22 × 30 in.
Courtesy of the artist.

A blocky rendering of a ship in the ocean. The sky is pink, and red text in the top left corner reads “Coloring in the lines – fines, 5-8-17. Took sick day. Are my drawings getting better or worse? What if the poets in the magic workshop were in a genie bottle ship? And the one who wanted to get in was hovering?”

Amanda Friedman
Ship I, 2017.
Crayon, linen, oil, gouache, watercolor, pastel, paper
24 × 18 in.
Courtesy of the artist.

A dense and colorful abstract piece with collaged elements incorporating various textures and colors, including scratched and overlaid blues, reds, blacks and whites.

Hannah Rose Dumes
Wild Life, 2018.
Oil, oil pastel, collage on panel
18 × 24 in.
Courtesy of the artist.

Body parts float around the corner of a brick wall. A head pictured from the back faces the wall. Three hands make various gestures, appearing to point at something.

Austin Furtak-Cole
Pass Go, 2019.
Acrylic on paper
22 × 22 in
Courtesy of the artist.

A disembodied ear and mouth with bared teeth on top of a patchy geometric composition in blue and green. A shadow seems to loom over the center of the work.

Erin Hunt
Breathing through your Ear, 2017.
Oil on canvas
18 x14 in.
Courtesy of the artist.

Wide overlapping brush strokes in blue and green hues on a wavy parallelogram shaped panel.

Emily J Kiacz
Clear Swing, 2019.
Acrylic on shaped wooden panel
12 × 12 in.
Courtesy of the artist.

A dense, colorful, roughly rendered landscape including wooded hills and cliffs surrounding a river with large rocks.

Benjamin King
Untitled, 2018.
Acrylic on canvas
20 × 20 in.
Courtesy of the artist.

A figure wearing an iridescent garment surrounded by four amorphous shapes against a black background. The shapes depict landscapes and abstract patterns.

Alexandra Lakin
Persephone, 2017.
Pencil, gouache, computer
10 × 12 in.
Courtesy of the artist.

A psychedelic rendering of two scrawly figures exchanging fantastical plants against an airy pastel background. They stand on the giant leaves of a tall upright vine or shrub.

Margaret Mousseau
The Hippie Sisters Flying Above the Ground, 2019.
Colored pencil on paper
9 × 12 in.
Courtesy of the artist.

A black and white dog that is missing its left eye and wearing a heart shaped charm on its collar, roughly rendered against a brushy backdrop of blue and purple hues.

Jennifer Sullivan
Tiggy #2, 2018.
Oil and oil stick on canvas
32 × 30 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Five Car Garage.

Participating Artists

Karen Barbour
Hannah Rose Dumes
Amanda Friedman
Austin Furtak-Cole
Erin Hunt
Emily J Kiacz
Benjamin King
Alexandra Lakin
Margaret Mousseau
Jennifer Sullivan

Exhibition Description

Usually I find art in the world by following ant trails, which leaves a map of sorts, it’s easy to sort out how I got there, through whom and why, and yet it’s a near total mystery when something speaks back. I curated this exhibition by clicking over and over again on the random select button of the White Columns registry page. Is that how everyone does it? The artworks enclosed speak to patterns in nature, psychology and dream space that echo memories, made up memories, things I have never seen. The imagination.

Early memories consist of natural scenes for most of us. Our bodies are formed by nature and before we access language we’re interpreting color and sound the way we interpret trees and light after we have language. There is a deep affinity for the soulfulness of the natural environment, the shapes which allude to it, curves, color, translucency, light, reflection. In abstraction we have knotted emotions densely organized and expanded, articulated, suggested through the mirror knowledge of touch and time. I look at a thing and understand instantly how it was made by the body, a primal act with intention and purpose but also a swipe or a smear.

Narrative works encompass simultaneous worlds that are at once literal and metaphorical. Like a fable with dark energy and a positive moral, everything is witchcraft and a cauldron and the fire under the cauldron and the vision inside the crystal ball or the fire. The right and wrong way to go through things. A scene, slightly inaccessible is positioned among a few objects all of which have a meaning and are also people, each of whom suggests an interaction and an ending.

Our moral predicament is described through the pictures and places that are everywhere and nowhere, cooked up with barest knowledge. The sounds that come naturally before language, the light in Plato’s cave, a quickly disappearing spaceship, the shadow of a giant fir tree. A rainbow, a rabbit disappearing inside a cabbage patch. A carrot. Everything in the world is beautiful because of the possibility of nothing and the spell it casts over anything that we might be allowed.

This exhibition is the eleventh in a series of online exhibitions curated exclusively from White Columns’ Curated Artist Registry.

For more information: registry.whitecolumns.org

Six roughly rendered yellow flowers with blue stems and leaves against a painterly backdrop with brown, red and black patches.
A blocky rendering of a ship in the ocean. The sky is pink, and red text in the top left corner reads “Coloring in the lines – fines, 5-8-17. Took sick day. Are my drawings getting better or worse? What if the poets in the magic workshop were in a genie bottle ship? And the one who wanted to get in was hovering?”
A dense and colorful abstract piece with collaged elements incorporating various textures and colors, including scratched and overlaid blues, reds, blacks and whites.
Body parts float around the corner of a brick wall. A head pictured from the back faces the wall. Three hands make various gestures, appearing to point at something.
A disembodied ear and mouth with bared teeth on top of a patchy geometric composition in blue and green. A shadow seems to loom over the center of the work.
Wide overlapping brush strokes in blue and green hues on a wavy parallelogram shaped panel.
A dense, colorful, roughly rendered landscape including wooded hills and cliffs surrounding a river with large rocks.
A figure wearing an iridescent garment surrounded by four amorphous shapes against a black background. The shapes depict landscapes and abstract patterns.
A psychedelic rendering of two scrawly figures exchanging fantastical plants against an airy pastel background. They stand on the giant leaves of a tall upright vine or shrub.
A black and white dog that is missing its left eye and wearing a heart shaped charm on its collar, roughly rendered against a brushy backdrop of blue and purple hues.

Karen Barbour
Untitled, 2018.
Oil on paper
22 × 30 in.
Courtesy of the artist. (Six roughly rendered yellow flowers with blue stems and leaves against a painterly backdrop with brown, red and black patches.)

Amanda Friedman
Ship I, 2017.
Crayon, linen, oil, gouache, watercolor, pastel, paper
24 × 18 in.
Courtesy of the artist. (A blocky rendering of a ship in the ocean. The sky is pink, and red text in the top left corner reads “Coloring in the lines – fines, 5-8-17. Took sick day. Are my drawings getting better or worse? What if the poets in the magic workshop were in a genie bottle ship? And the one who wanted to get in was hovering?”)

Hannah Rose Dumes
Wild Life, 2018.
Oil, oil pastel, collage on panel
18 × 24 in.
Courtesy of the artist. (A dense and colorful abstract piece with collaged elements incorporating various textures and colors, including scratched and overlaid blues, reds, blacks and whites.)

Austin Furtak-Cole
Pass Go, 2019.
Acrylic on paper
22 × 22 in
Courtesy of the artist. (Body parts float around the corner of a brick wall. A head pictured from the back faces the wall. Three hands make various gestures, appearing to point at something.)

Erin Hunt
Breathing through your Ear, 2017.
Oil on canvas
18 x14 in.
Courtesy of the artist. (A disembodied ear and mouth with bared teeth on top of a patchy geometric composition in blue and green. A shadow seems to loom over the center of the work.)

Emily J Kiacz
Clear Swing, 2019.
Acrylic on shaped wooden panel
12 × 12 in.
Courtesy of the artist. (Wide overlapping brush strokes in blue and green hues on a wavy parallelogram shaped panel.)

Benjamin King
Untitled, 2018.
Acrylic on canvas
20 × 20 in.
Courtesy of the artist. (A dense, colorful, roughly rendered landscape including wooded hills and cliffs surrounding a river with large rocks.)

Alexandra Lakin
Persephone, 2017.
Pencil, gouache, computer
10 × 12 in.
Courtesy of the artist. (A figure wearing an iridescent garment surrounded by four amorphous shapes against a black background. The shapes depict landscapes and abstract patterns.)

Margaret Mousseau
The Hippie Sisters Flying Above the Ground, 2019.
Colored pencil on paper
9 × 12 in.
Courtesy of the artist. (A psychedelic rendering of two scrawly figures exchanging fantastical plants against an airy pastel background. They stand on the giant leaves of a tall upright vine or shrub.)

Jennifer Sullivan
Tiggy #2, 2018.
Oil and oil stick on canvas
32 × 30 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Five Car Garage. (A black and white dog that is missing its left eye and wearing a heart shaped charm on its collar, roughly rendered against a brushy backdrop of blue and purple hues.)