October 17 - November 14, 2009


opening reception for the artists:
Saturday, October 17, 2009  5:30 - 8:30pm

Joe Mancuso
New Works

Joe Mancuso's new large-scale canvases of incorporate a variety of media and processes to achieve bold and dynamic floral abstractions that cover the canvases in an organized chaos that achieves fully conceptualized works and at the same time is evocative of quick and intuitive sketching.  In these most recent paintings, Mancuso's penchant for the use of mathematical patterning gives way to a loose romanticism of mark making and in a distinct departure from the muted palette of past works adopts a range of color informed by his botanical subjects.

left: Joe Mancuso, Etude I, 2008, mixed media on canvas, 24x24"
right: Joe Mancuso, Etude V, 2008, mixed media on canvas, 24x24"

Michael Tole
The Poniard Twists!  My Mutiny...

The common thread that weaves throughout Michael Tole's work is that he captures moments and never stages his subjects. His subjects are painted as they are found, whether they are the gift-lined shelves of a country store, El Paso streets on a snowy Christmas or multi-colored Fabergé eggs. His newest paintings focus on the world of curiosities presented at the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum in St. Augustine, Florida. Tole will present four large-scale representations of the elaborately carved Chinese camel bone sculptures which depict a floating world of pagodas and the robed figures that inhabit them.
Awkwardly cropped and sometimes out of focus, these images are the source material for a collection of paintings that are technically masterful and offer a unique view of how an artist's eye sees the world.

image: Michael Tole, Untitled (dragon chariot), 2009, oil on canvas, 48x96"

PROJECT ROOM

Mimi Kato
Four Seasons

Japanese photographer Mimi Kato will exhibit for the first time in Dallas showing a large scale photographic series depicting each of the four seasons. Drawing influence from Japanese Kyogen performers and contemporary Butoh dancers, Kato orchestrates a one-person theater in which the finished performance only takes place in the completed photographs.  Reference to theater comes not only from the performance aspect, but also from the making of costumes and props for each role, the choreographing of movements and poses for each character and the narrating of the scene.

Mimi Kato earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from The University of Texas at San Antonio in 2006 and has since shown at Artpace in San Antonio, Texas; the Roswell Museum of Art, Roswell, NM; the Ballina Arts Center, Ballina, Ireland; Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas and the 2007 Foto Noviembre at the  International Photo Festival, Canary Islands, Spain. She currently lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri.

image: Mimi Kato, Spring, 2008, archival pigment print, 24x66.5"