Project 8: Spacetime

ZEPHYR GALLERY

PROJECT

8

S P A C E T I M E June 12 – August 15, 2015

Michael Scheurer

The Girls Coloring Space

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S P A C E T I M E Space and time are a couple of rather large concepts. Many (most? all?) art endeavors can be discussed as an effort to reckon with one or both of these concepts. Project 8: Spacetime deals with the intersections of these reckonings. Each work in this exhibition collapses temporal and/or physical space, bringing along multiple histories. Four of the artists in Spacetime present their works discretely, as autonomous objects. The Girls Coloring Space, however, exists as an active response to these works, the gallery space, and the building’s history. In essence, they co-opt the exhibition and the space in which it resides. It is a gentle takeover though, meant to illuminate and conceptually annotate. They provide a visual subtext for the show.

Marc Lambert makes beautifully straightforward paintings of potential future cities as filtered through the mid-20th century promise of flying cars and bubble cities. For his “canvas”, Lambert recycles acoustic ceiling tiles. His practical choice of materials yields a richly textured surface that is thematically consistent with his retro-future, utopic compositions. These are contemporary objects depicting the future from the perspective of the past. Lambert expands his future vision by creating improvised spaceships, assembled from discarded plastic and cardboard pieces. Again, his material choices echo those of his paintings in their pragmatism.

Though dramatically different by result, Michael Scheurer also compresses elements drawn from seemingly separate points in time. Scheurer primarily works in small drawings and collages, combining found materials and adding painted or drawn elements to create odd and occasionally confounding compositions. The works in this exhibition use found prints from manuscripts and maps to form a base that Scheurer works and re-works into very tightly defined images. His work, though small in scale, invents infinite worlds that seem to reveal new spaces and details even with multiple viewings. As a lifelong collector of antiques and artifacts, Scheurer incorporates material histories into his work – a torn page from an old book is transformed into an abstracted mountain range or a piece from a reproduction of an 18th century Japanese drawing becomes the backdrop for a found children’s drawing. Though he pulls from different times and high and low culture, Scheurer does not establish a hierarchy in the frame. In fact, it is often difficult to note exactly where one history ends and another begins.

A similar tension occurs within Christy Wittmer’s work. For Wittmer, this is achieved using found and fabricated objects rather than images. That the fragile seeming objects Wittmer assembles are also literally balanced on each other heightens that tension both within the work and for the viewer. Though there is some metaphorical value in the careful balance of natural and manufactured objects, the compositions themselves are ultimately incredibly satisfying as sculpture. Her work also rewards investigation as elements of color and unexpected materials are concealed and revealed as you move around the work. Wittmer frequently combines carefully crafted pieces with broken bits of concrete or plaster making little distinction between these materials. Anything can become a prop and anything can become elevated as the lines between the mass produced, the naturally occurring and the handmade object become slippery and interdependent.

Kathleen Brannigan’s psychedelic stream of consciousness drawings likewise speak to the blurry space between the built and the organic worlds. Her drawings twist rockets, planes, flora and fauna in upon themselves with a cubist-meets blind-contour style. The results are tightly rendered and ornately detailed pencil, ink and watercolor drawings which blend mechanical and organic hybridized figures to create flying machines and escape pods. Brannigan often takes painstaking care to title her works with unique poetic verse. These titles set up an open-ended narrative in the work that can lead the viewer through the image, but just as often leads them off the page and into another idea or space.

The open-ended narratives of all of the works in the exhibition are exactly what The Girls Coloring Space exploit. Everything is open game for comment or response. Using a modest range of materials and techniques, they approach each project as an expanded performative drawing. The Girls weave in and out of Spacetime armed with some research on the space, pencils and a handful of other embellishments leaving behind a fractured landscape stretching across the gallery walls.

MATT DISTEL 2015

Kathleen Brannigan

Christy Wittmer

Exhibition Checklist Kathleen Brannigan

Michael Scheurer

The robin that sat on the log and was thinking about the orange ladder, 2010, Pen and marker on paper, 14 x 24 inches

Untitled #1 (Inky Series), 2014, Mixed media collage with paint on paper, 7 x 5.5 inches

Supersonic Jet, 2010, Pencil on paper, 17 x 11 inches

Untitled #9 (Inky Series), 2014, Mixed media collage with paint on paper, 7.375 x 5.5 inches

Things that Fly, 2010, Watercolor on paper, 14 x 16.5 inches Airplain, 2010, Marker on paper, 11 x 17 inches Space Shuttle, 2010, Marker and watercolor on paper, 24 x 14 inches

Untitled #11 (Inky Series), 2014, Mixed media collage with paint on paper, 7..25 x 5.25 inches Untitled #17 (Inky Series), 2014, Mixed media collage with paint on paper, 8.5 x 6.5 inches

Christy Wittmer The Girls Coloring Space After Spacetime, 2015, Site-specific drawing, Dimensions variable

Marc Lambert Super New Future Utopia: Parts 1 and 2, 2013, Acrylic on ceiling tiles, 2 Tiles @ 23.5 x 23.5 inches each Super New Future Utopia #3, 2013, Acrylic on ceiling tile, 23.5 x 23.5 inches Super New Future Utopia #4, 2013, Acrylic on ceiling tile, 23 x 23 inches Silverstreak, 2013, Acrylic on ceiling tile, 22 x 23.5 inches Space Mall, 2013, Acrylic on ceiling tile, 23.5 x 23.5 inches Mall, 2015, Acrylic on ceiling tile, 23.5 x 23.5 inches Campus, 2015, Acrylic on ceiling tile, 23.5 x 23.5 inches The Old Silver Bomber, 2007, Acrylic, repurposed cardboard, plastic and other found materials, 27 x 36 x 11 inches The Star Crosser, 2007, Acrylic, repurposed cardboard, plastic and other found materials, 26 x 36 x 23 inches White Star Crosser, 2015, Acrylic, repurposed cardboard, plastic and other found materials, 22 x 30 x 11 inches Brown Star Crosser, 2015, Acrylic, repurposed cardboard, plastic and other found materials, 26 x 36 x 23 inches

Slightly Stilted, 2015, Porcelain, joint compound, concrete, wood, aerated concrete, 68 x 26 x 8 inches Accumulation, 2014-15, Porcelain, wood, plywood, concrete, aerated concrete, gold luster, 17 x 48 x 9 inches Simulated, 2014-15, Wood, plywood, aerated concrete, porcelain, concrete, linoleum, powder print, wire baskets, 49 x 48 x 12 inches

Biographies Kathleen Brannigan (b. 1957, Cincinnati, Ohio) maintains a studio with Visionaries + Voices in Cincinnati and has exhibited at The Carnegie in Covington, Kentucky, Cincinnati Art Museum, and KMAC in Louisville.

The Girls Coloring Space (b. 2015, Cincinnati, Ohio) is a drawing collective developed out of a desire to expand individual drawing practice to installation scale and test ideas about creating environments using drawing techniques.

Marc Lambert (b. 1952, Cincinnati, Ohio) has exhibited at the Outsider Art Fair, NY with Creative Growth and is a frequent contributor to the programming at Thunder-Sky, Inc in Cincinnati.

Michael Scheurer (b. 1954, Cincinnati, Ohio) has exhibited extensively in the region including shows with the Contemporary Arts Center, the Weston Art Gallery, Mark Patsfall Gallery, Aisle Gallery, and the Michael Lowe Gallery. Christy Wittmer (b. 1974, Mansfield, Ohio) is recent graduate of University of Cincinnati’s DAAP MFA program and has been awarded residencies throughout the world for her work in ceramics.

Matt Distel (b. 1972, Cincinnati, Ohio) is the Exhibitions Director for The Carnegie in Covington, Kentucky and has served as a curator for the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati and Cincinnati Art Museum. He is a lifelong bureaucrat.

Zephyr Gallery Artist Board

Artist Partners

Patrick Donley Peggy Sue Howard Chris Radtke Michael Ratterman Brenda Wirth

Ken Hayden Matt Meers Robert Mitchell Joel Pinkerton Letitia Quesenberry Reba Rye

PROJECT 8: SPACETIME Matt Distel

Curator

Hannah Morgan

Project Manager

Robert Mitchell

Graphic Designer

Chris Radtke

Exhibition Co-Coordinator

Patrick Donley

Art Preparator

Peggy Sue Howard

Exhibition Co-Coordinator

Image Credits Marc Lambert (Front Cover, detail) Super New Future Utopia #3, 2013, Acrylic on ceiling tile, 23.5 x 23.5 inches Kathleen Brannigan The robin that sat on the log and was thinking about the orange ladder, 2010, Pen and marker on paper, 14 x 24 inches The Girls Coloring Space The girls, coloring space, 2015, Graphite, ink, glitter, wire, Image credit: Scott Beseler Michael Scheurer Untitled #1 (Inky Series), 2014, Mixed media collage with paint on paper, 7 x 5.5 inches Christy Wittmer Accumulation (detail), 2014-15, Porcelain, wood, plywood, concrete, aerated concrete, gold luster, 17 x 48 x 9 inches

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 8: Spacetime is the eighth exhibition in this series.

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