Tran is known for her laboriously created Urushi lacquer paintings and sculptures. Her use of organic, flowing shapes, rich surface pattern and texture creates beautiful multi-layered abstractions. Urushi, an ancient technique, is well-known in many Eastern cultures, but still quite obscure in the West. The arduous and demanding techniques involved in working with Urushi lacquer result in hundreds of layers of pigment and lacquer for each piece.
In a departure from the physicality of using Urushi, Tran has taken to the new challenge of incorporating digital collage into her oeuvre. Continuing to explore her fascination with rhythms found in nature, the new digital medium allows Tran to use these sophisticated tools to create what she calls an “orchestral combination,” through collage of her photographs of nature and fragmentary images of her Urushi paintings. Her goal with the new digital series is to explore rhythms not only within each component image, but also within the interaction created by their assembly.
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Martin’s lifelong fascination with the beauty of decaying surfaces found on discarded, manmade objects like old cans, trucks and industrial debris is his inspiration for much of his new work. Not only do they reveal beauty in their textures, shapes and colors, they allow for allegorical references, implying alternate realities and alluding to human existence. Like a mirage, Martin distorts reality using oil, acrylic and canvas to provoke the viewer’s imagination.
Glass artist Chalos-McAleese's new work juxtaposes fragile, geometric glass forms with the strength and textures of stone and metal, with her combination of the two materials. These layers of these vastly differing textures are reminiscent of the striations seen in geologic cross sections. Her signature patterns in the cold-formed glass reflect the shapes and lines seen from a cross-continental flight over the Great Plains taken by the artist last year. The views of the crops and the irrigation lines cutting across the patchwork fields, plowed and planted, are the inspiration for this new body of work.
Holloway constructs sculptural stills that embody the Midwestern environment as both an emotional and physical sense of home. The native geography and wildlife help introduce a narrative of growth and romantic discovery. Holloway’s 2010 Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship allowed her to explore the otherwise overlooked charm of the region. Outsider Art and Midwestern roadside attractions were investigated during her fellowship experience to find both inspiration and make connections with quaint, but extraordinary people.
Gallery 924 presents an exploration of wood. As an art tool, an art medium, both in its natural form or re-imagined by the artist, wood can serve as functional furniture, surreal science fiction creatures or simply a substrate on which to paint. The Wood Show features 20 of central Indiana’s top artists paying homage to wood in a variety of forms – painting, sculpture, printmaking and more.
Gallery 924 is proud to host the annual Indiana Glass Arts Alliance juried exhibition to recognize Indiana’s best glass artists. The 2011 jurors are Marta Hewett of Cincinnati and Che Rhodes of the University of Louisville. The mission of the exhibition is to enhance the development and recognition of Indiana’s glass artists and to increase awareness of glass as a fine art medium. The show includes a diverse selection of glass pieces including traditional vessels and contemporary sculpture.
September 2-30, 2011
TRANSCENDENCE addresses the innate sense that we as human beings are more than a physical vessel. Over 20 central Indiana artists were challenged with the investigation of the body as a spiritual entity that possesses the potential to transcend its physical limitations through philosophical and psychological means. The works make pointed observations and pose questions concerning the complexity of human existence and our relationship with the unknown universe.
Whether created for ritual, prestige, historical documentation or self-expression, artists have been rendering the human form for thousands of years and its significance to the art historical canon cannot be overstated. In July, Gallery 924 explores the human figure with a select group of central Indiana contemporary artists. Although portraits, nudes and other traditional renderings of the human form have come in and out of favor and evolved over time, the innate desire of artists to study and visually express the core of our physical existence is as strong as ever.
