PROJECT 14: Drawn to Bodies

ZEPHYR GALLERY

PROJECT

14 12

DRAWN to BODIES

September 2 - October 22, 2016

Lina Tharsing: Studio View, 2016, Photograph by the artist.

Georgia Henkel: Land Swimming, 2016, Beets, blueberries, gouache, and graphite on first marriage bed linens, 9� x 7�

Drawn to Bodies When I draw I get excited, I talk to myself, I make grimaces, I curse at people, I move about all the time changing bodily as well as character- and personality-wise.

Arnulf Rainer

I don’t know what utterances and actions accompanied the production of the art in this exhibition. Or if the artists brought together here sit quietly, listen to music, drink tea, or pace anxiously while they work. During the past two years, I have been interested in their representational art and, when given the chance to curate an exhibition at Zephyr Gallery, I thought I could use the opportunity to engage them in questions of motivation, method, subject matter, and connections between their previous output and current endeavors.

Each of these contemporary practitioners is involved with traditions of realism. They are from different generations, and their approaches range from the allegorical to the erotic, from mining socio-political histories of the 1960s to inventing protagonists and giving them various landscapes to wander in.

Figures abound—in drawings, paintings, woodblock prints, and video animation—seen whole or in fragments, understood as empowered or vulnerable.

Martin Beck presents recent figure studies which document seated and standing models observed for varying amounts of time. They are rendered in vivid pastels that give the bodies a nervous Fauvist energy. Paired with detailed pencil studies for large paintings from a previous decade, they reveal Beck’s shift from psychological narratives to more intimate explorations of anatomy and overlay.

Jay Bolotin is an interdisciplinary artist whose work often combines elements of visual art, theatre, film, literature, and music. He is represented here by a selection of drawings and prints that are component parts of recent publishing and film projects—images of faces, limbs, houses, train stations, texts, and objects that are used in the service of elaborate and ecstatic storytelling.

Georgia Henkel is known for paintings that examine the physical and psychological aspects of humans and animals. In works made for this exhibition, she mines the expressive potential of food and domestic items of personal significance. Combining beets, blueberries, and bed linens, she conjures desirous beings from evocative stains and spills.

Aaron Skolnick’s installation, Forever And Supremely Someone Else, features approximately 40 individual works in a range of media, as well as handwritten notes and objects. They collectively speak to the artist’s obsession with Jackie Onassis and his ongoing investigation of portrait space and the gap between person and persona.

Lina Tharsing investigates nature and artifice, and her paintings often incorporate data from photographs found online and ones she takes herself during outdoor excursions. She is mourning the death of her father, painter Robert Tharsing, who died in December and in whose studio she is now working.

Surrounded by many of his landscape-inspired canvases and personal items, she has been repeatedly creating images of a single charred, black tree emanating light.

The participating artists have generously agreed to orient the exhibition towards process rather than product, to try and put their thinking about “making” on view. We will take various artworks to Louisville and see what happens. We will turn the gallery into a lab, where notions are tested and outcomes can be unpredictable.

Stuart Horodner 2016

Aaron Skolnick: Jackie for Luc, 2012, Oil on paper, 15” x 11”

Aaron Skolnick: Me and Jackie, 2013, Archival digital print, Dimensions variable

Jay Bolotin: Some Houses of Enoch, 2015, Graphite on board, 20” x 30”

Artist Biographies

Martin Beck (b. 1962; lives in Lexington, KY) received a BFA from SUNY Buffalo in 1986 and an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992. He has had solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; The Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ; and the Birke Gallery, Marshall University, Huntington, WV. His work has been reviewed in ArtPapers, The New York Times, and The Sunday Star Ledger and featured in American Artist.

Jay Bolotin (b.1949; lives in Cincinnati, OH) studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design and pursued his interest in music by working as a songwriter with Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, and Dan Fogelberg in the early 1970s. He has had solo shows at institutions including the Samek Art Gallery at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA; Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati; Joslyn Art Center, Omaha; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and Vanderbilt University, Nashville. His work is in collections, including Cleveland Institute of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Seattle Art Museum.

Georgia Henkel (b. 1960; lives in Lexington, KY) received her BFA, BA in Art Education, and MA in Art Education at the University of Kentucky. In 2015, she created a site-specific installation for Peoples Portal, an exhibition at the Peoples Bank in Lexington, KY, and curated the group exhibition Currents: Horror Amour at the Lexington Art League. She recently organized a student art exchange between the Sayre Lower School and the Casa de Cultura in Baracoa, Cuba.

Aaron Michael Skolnick (b. 1989; lives in Lexington, KY) received a BFA from the University of Kentucky in 2012 and was the recipient of the Theophilia Joan Oexmann Original Art Award. His recent solo exhibition took place at Glacier Gallery in Cincinnati, and he participated in group shows at Louis B. James and Berry Campbell, New York City; Minotaur Projects, Los Angeles; and David B. Smith Gallery, Denver. Skolnick has also organized exhibitions at The Local Speed and Land of Tomorrow Gallery in Louisville and RARE Gallery in New York City.

Lina Tharsing (b. 1983; lives in Lexington, KY) has exhibited her work throughout the southeastern United States. Her solo exhibitions include: Making a New Forest at the University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital; {{Poem 88}} in Atlanta, GA; Natural History at Institute 193, Lexington, KY; and Natural History II at Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX. Her work has been featured in Garden & Guns Magazine, Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Hyperallergic, among others.

Curator Biography

Stuart Horodner (b. 1962; lives in Lexington, KY) is director of the University of Kentucky Art Museum. He has held positions as artistic director of the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA; curator at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; and director of the Bucknell University Art Gallery, Lewisburg, PA. He was co-owner of the Horodner Romley Gallery, New York, NY. He has contributed to journals and magazines, including Art on Paper, Bomb, Dazed & Confused, Sculpture, and Surface. His book The Art Life: On Creativity and Career was published in 2012.

Checklist

Because the five artists chosen for PROJECT 14 have created site-specific installations that combine new and existing works, a formal checklist was not available for printing within the brochure. Wall labels will be presented at the gallery to provide information for viewers.

Zephyr Gallery Artist Board

Patrick Donley Ken Hayden Peggy Sue Howard Chris Radtke Brenda Wirth

Artist Partners Matt Meers Robert Mitchell Joel Pinkerton Reba Rye

PROJECT 14: Drawn to Bodies Stuart Horodner Jessica Oberdick Robert Mitchell Chris Radtke Peggy Sue Howard Patrick Donley

Curator Project Manager Graphic Design Exhibition Co-Coordinator Exhibition Co-Coordinator Exhibition Preparator

Image Credit

Front Cover: Martin Beck: GTn 1 (Detail), In progress drawing, 4th state, 2016,

Pastel on paper, 26” x 40”

The mission of Zephyr Gallery is to serve as a platform to incubate, advocate, and facilitate innovative ideas in art and artistic practices in the region. In 2014, Zephyr launched an ongoing Project series with curated proposal-based exhibitions as well as collaborations with universities, colleges, and cultural institutions. Project 14: Drawn to Bodies is the fourteenth exhibition in this series.

610 East Market Street | Louisville, KY 40202 www.zephyrgallery.org | Thursday–Saturday, 11–6