Conduit Gallery -- Dallas, TX

January 15 - February 12, 2005

If You Were Here

Jennifer Coates
Gerald C. DePrie
Michael Eade
Mike Goodlett
David Humphrey
Charley Kinney
Lawrence Tarpey
Gilbert Perrin
Daniel Wiener

If You Were Here is a group exhibition featuring the work of nine artists from New York and Kentucky varied in use of materials and disparate in geographical locations. Co-curators Mary Dinaburg (Mary Dinaburg Fine Arts, New York, NY) and Jim Clark (President & CEO, Lexington Arts & Cultural Council, Lexington, KY) find in these nine artists a similar pursuit of one Truth, towards the expression of a private, fantastical world turned inside-out.

JENNIFER COATES (New York, NY) Jennifer Coates' large-scale paintings break the logic of traditional landscape. Within her painterly spaces, she constructs a fantasy world of wonders and incongruities that are the product of her imagination. These imaged events represent our mind's ability to create in a virtual world that can only exist by means of representation.

GERALD C. DePRIE (1935-1999) (Berea, KY) Gerald C. DePrie's drawings of imaginary people and places depicted with the unselfconscious use of flat color and a stage-like space appear almost formal in their use of color and composition. His images with their references to real though exaggerated qualities occupy a rational space characteristically empty and devoid of unnecessary details. Shrouded in incongruity, DePrie's dense, symbolically packed narratives are tinged with a sense of remoteness that lend them an air of both humor and anxiety.

MICHEAL EADE (New York, NY) Michael Eade's aggressively colored, complex compositions are carefully conceived constructs whose pictorial elements are drawn from the art of both Eastern and Western cultures. By combining his sophisticated knowledge of the traditional methods and materials of early Christian painting, Asian and Persian art, along with the stylistic appeal of the simple and direct manner of an outsider, Eade produces an aesthetic which is structurally and stylistically intuitive and personal, without becoming expressionist or painterly. Looking at Eade's vistas of tangled patterns of flora and fauna awash in the high key color of a fauvist palette, we are in turn offered an excursion into a "lost world" of allegory and metaphor.

MIKE GOODLETT (Wilmore, KY) In the shallow space afforded by gold shadowbox frames Mike Goodlett constructs gothic structures made of folded paper which are inscribed with enigmatic images and manic patterns drawn in ballpoint pen. The result is an aggregation of fantastical forms reflecting the human mind's inescapable desire to establish order and logic.

DAVID HUMPHREY (New York, NY) Though David Humphrey's seemingly amicable paintings are inhabited by saccharine kittens, puppies and babies, the abrupt shifts in scale and an off key pastel palette make the cotton candy moments psychologically disquieting. The resulting drama exposes the aggressive hidden in the passive, the perversion of the agreeable, the deformed that passes for the normal, the frustration concealed by the comforting and the kitsch of the high minded.

CHARLEY KINNEY (1906-1991) (Vanceburg, KY) The work of self-taught artist Charley Kinney mix unrefined images and text. Such works read like the private language of someone attempting to record their excitement and wonderment with their everyday world. The works are repleat with small spectacles, which appear to be fantastical and fanciful though are often nothing more than non eventful tales. Yet in the style and manner of their telling they become a bit more twisted, bent, tangled, enhanced and eventually dramatized.

GILBERT PERRIN (Sandy Hook, KY) Gilbert Perrin's dream-like landscape drawings are never just pictures of nature. They represent the worlds as a simple static place where the forces of nature exist in balance and harmony. Though apparently intuitive, Perrin's taming of nature by exaggerating its underlying order may be interpreted as representing the struggle between nature and reason.

LAWRENCE TARPEY (Lexington, KY) Lawrence Tarpey's drawings peel back the imagined and symbolic structures meant to redirect our gaze away from the forbidden secrets that would be revealed if we could only penetrate our own flawed logics. In his world, the real is a sinister fog from which the known emerges.

DANIEL WIENER (Brooklyn, NY) Daniel Wiener's work is an invitation to enter an alternate, though not alien world. It is at once familiar, given it is populated by mutated organic and floral forms sculpted into fanciful landscapes. Wiener's is a miniature world, constructed from hydrocal, whose contours are like those of mounds of melted ice cream and where one cannot help but wonder what grows just beneath the surface.

PROJECT ROOM

Marci Branagan
Brutes

Marci Branagan molds, casts and fabricates a world of science; unique, strange and impeccably realistic. Her Beasties series reconstructs animals in cloth, bone, latex and pigment exist as biological specimens filed in stasis as in a science and natural history museum. Branagan's work explores both the inherent awe of nature and the Humanist pursuits of fine art.

Marci Branagan earned her BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in 2003 and has since been awarded the Trawick Young Artist Award. Exhibitions since 2003 also include Room Full of Mirrors curated by Joseph Mills at the University of Maryland and #tWENTYONE Gallery, Washington, D.C. This will be Marci Branagan's first exhibition in Dallas as well as in Texas.



			January 15 - February 12, 2005 If You Were Here Jennifer Coates Gerald C. DePrie Michael Eade Mike Goodlett David Humphrey Charley Kinney Lawrence Tarpey Gilbert Perrin Daniel Wiener If You Were Here is a group exhibition featuring the work of nine artists from New York and Kentucky varied in use of materials and disparate in geographical locations. Co-curators Mary Dinaburg (Mary Dinaburg Fine Arts, New York, NY) and Jim Clark (President & CEO, Lexington Arts & Cultural Council, Lexington, KY) find in these nine artists a similar pursuit of one Truth, towards the expression of a private, fantastical world turned inside-out. JENNIFER COATES (New York, NY) Jennifer Coates' large-scale paintings break the logic of traditional landscape. Within her painterly spaces, she constructs a fantasy world of wonders and incongruities that are the product of her imagination. These imaged events represent our mind's ability to create in a virtual world that can only exist by means of representation. GERALD C. DePRIE (1935-1999) (Berea, KY) Gerald C. DePrie's drawings of imaginary people and places depicted with the unselfconscious use of flat color and a stage-like space appear almost formal in their use of color and composition. His images with their references to real though exaggerated qualities occupy a rational space characteristically empty and devoid of unnecessary details. Shrouded in incongruity, DePrie's dense, symbolically packed narratives are tinged with a sense of remoteness that lend them an air of both humor and anxiety. MICHEAL EADE (New York, NY) Michael Eade's aggressively colored, complex compositions are carefully conceived constructs whose pictorial elements are drawn from the art of both Eastern and Western cultures. By combining his sophisticated knowledge of the traditional methods and materials of early Christian painting, Asian and Persian art, along with the stylistic appeal of the simple and direct manner of an outsider, Eade produces an aesthetic which is structurally and stylistically intuitive and personal, without becoming expressionist or painterly. Looking at Eade's vistas of tangled patterns of flora and fauna awash in the high key color of a fauvist palette, we are in turn offered an excursion into a "lost world" of allegory and metaphor. MIKE GOODLETT (Wilmore, KY) In the shallow space afforded by gold shadowbox frames Mike Goodlett constructs gothic structures made of folded paper which are inscribed with enigmatic images and manic patterns drawn in ballpoint pen. The result is an aggregation of fantastical forms reflecting the human mind's inescapable desire to establish order and logic. DAVID HUMPHREY (New York, NY) Though David Humphrey's seemingly amicable paintings are inhabited by saccharine kittens, puppies and babies, the abrupt shifts in scale and an off key pastel palette make the cotton candy moments psychologically disquieting. The resulting drama exposes the aggressive hidden in the passive, the perversion of the agreeable, the deformed that passes for the normal, the frustration concealed by the comforting and the kitsch of the high minded. CHARLEY KINNEY (1906-1991) (Vanceburg, KY) The work of self-taught artist Charley Kinney mix unrefined images and text. Such works read like the private language of someone attempting to record their excitement and wonderment with their everyday world. The works are repleat with small spectacles, which appear to be fantastical and fanciful though are often nothing more than non eventful tales. Yet in the style and manner of their telling they become a bit more twisted, bent, tangled, enhanced and eventually dramatized. GILBERT PERRIN (Sandy Hook, KY) Gilbert Perrin's dream-like landscape drawings are never just pictures of nature. They represent the worlds as a simple static place where the forces of nature exist in balance and harmony. Though apparently intuitive, Perrin's taming of nature by exaggerating its underlying order may be interpreted as representing the struggle between nature and reason. LAWRENCE TARPEY (Lexington, KY) Lawrence Tarpey's drawings peel back the imagined and symbolic structures meant to redirect our gaze away from the forbidden secrets that would be revealed if we could only penetrate our own flawed logics. In his world, the real is a sinister fog from which the known emerges. DANIEL WIENER (Brooklyn, NY) Daniel Wiener's work is an invitation to enter an alternate, though not alien world. It is at once familiar, given it is populated by mutated organic and floral forms sculpted into fanciful landscapes. Wiener's is a miniature world, constructed from hydrocal, whose contours are like those of mounds of melted ice cream and where one cannot help but wonder what grows just beneath the surface. PROJECT ROOM Marci Branagan Brutes Marci Branagan molds, casts and fabricates a world of science; unique, strange and impeccably realistic. Her Beasties series reconstructs animals in cloth, bone, latex and pigment exist as biological specimens filed in stasis as in a science and natural history museum. Branagan's work explores both the inherent awe of nature and the Humanist pursuits of fine art. Marci Branagan earned her BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in 2003 and has since been awarded the Trawick Young Artist Award. Exhibitions since 2003 also include Room Full of Mirrors curated by Joseph Mills at the University of Maryland and #tWENTYONE Gallery, Washington, D.C. This will be Marci Branagan's first exhibition in Dallas as well as in Texas.