Conduit Gallery -- Dallas, TX

September 17 - October 15, 2005

Joe Mancuso
Bouquet

Constructed from layers of paint over newsprint, Joe Mancuso's paintings elegantly balance meticulous craft and stoic materiality. Mancuso's refreshingly honest understanding of humble materials such as latex paint, news print, concrete and bricks allows the artist to create elegant art objects from industrial debris. Materials are chosen for their physicality and nature and arranged in grandiose configurations. The artist's mathematical preparations, rigorous patterning and complex construction techniques appear at odds with the use of found objects, but the artist resolves this paradox in ways that are infinitely varied and enriching. Mancuso uses a restrained palette employing whites, grays, and blacks, with accents of muted reds. The canvases appear built of constructed layers of paint over newsprint. With exacting restraint and considerable understatement Joe Mancuso proves again and again that less is indeed more.

Billy Hassell
Compass

Inspired by nature, Billy Hassell's work combines elements of abstraction and representation. While never entirely abandoning recognizable subject matter, he composes with an abstract sensibility, emphasizing image with a dramatic use of color and a whimsical use of pictorial space. Images of nature, birds in particular, and fragments of landscape recur frequently throughout his work. In the Compass exhibition, shapes are simplified, fragmented and arranged in a shallow space. The emblematic forms and silhouettes, like hieroglyphs in a language of signs and symbols, suggest an underlying narrative.

PROJECT ROOM

Yen-Hua Lee
Red Region

Throughout Yen-Hua Lee's eighteen-month residency in Texas, she has created hundreds of diary-like drawings that have chronicled her experiences. Though simple drawings of pen and ink, Lee has created a rich symbolic language, both tender and heartbreaking. Yen-Hua Lee earned her M.A. from the University of Dallas in 2004 and is a current M.F.A. candidate at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, IL. Born in Taiwan, Lee earned a B.F.A in Plastic Arts from the National Taiwan University of Arts and in 2001 was a resident at the Kecskemek International Ceramics Studio in Hungary.



			September 17 - October 15, 2005 Joe Mancuso Bouquet Constructed from layers of paint over newsprint, Joe Mancuso's paintings elegantly balance meticulous craft and stoic materiality. Mancuso's refreshingly honest understanding of humble materials such as latex paint, news print, concrete and bricks allows the artist to create elegant art objects from industrial debris. Materials are chosen for their physicality and nature and arranged in grandiose configurations. The artist's mathematical preparations, rigorous patterning and complex construction techniques appear at odds with the use of found objects, but the artist resolves this paradox in ways that are infinitely varied and enriching. Mancuso uses a restrained palette employing whites, grays, and blacks, with accents of muted reds. The canvases appear built of constructed layers of paint over newsprint. With exacting restraint and considerable understatement Joe Mancuso proves again and again that less is indeed more. i Billy Hassell *Compass* Inspired by nature, Billy Hassell's work combines elements of abstraction and representation. While never entirely abandoning recognizable subject matter, he composes with an abstract sensibility, emphasizing image with a dramatic use of color and a whimsical use of pictorial space. Images of nature, birds in particular, and fragments of landscape recur frequently throughout his work. In the Compass exhibition, shapes are simplified, fragmented and arranged in a shallow space. The emblematic forms and silhouettes, like hieroglyphs in a language of signs and symbols, suggest an underlying narrative. PROJECT ROOM Yen-Hua Lee Red Region Throughout Yen-Hua Lee's eighteen-month residency in Texas, she has created hundreds of diary-like drawings that have chronicled her experiences. Though simple drawings of pen and ink, Lee has created a rich symbolic language, both tender and heartbreaking. Yen-Hua Lee earned her M.A. from the University of Dallas in 2004 and is a current M.F.A. candidate at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, IL. Born in Taiwan, Lee earned a B.F.A in Plastic Arts from the National Taiwan University of Arts and in 2001 was a resident at the Kecskemek International Ceramics Studio in Hungary.