Contemporary Art

Beasts and Bunnies

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At The MAC (The McKinney Avenue Contemporary)
January 8 through February 12, 2011

Opening Reception with the Artists:
Saturday, January 8, 5:30–7:30 pm

Helen Altman, Frances Bagley, Celia Eberle, and Margaret Meehan in the large and square galleries. This group exhibition brings together these four artists to investigate “the animal” both literally and metaphorically. Helen Altman, Frances Bagley, Celia Eberle, and Margaret Meehan have all worked using animal imagery and share a similar sensibility. Through sculpture, painting, photography, works on paper, and video these artists each push and prod at the boundaries between nature and culture as well as the assumed distance between animal and human behavior. In addition to individual works by each artist, the exhibition will feature a collective installation titled Call and Response.

(above) Helen Altman, 'Goldfish' (detail)
(above) Helen Altman, ‘Goldfish’ (detail)
(above) Frances Bagley, 'Zebra'
(above) Frances Bagley, ‘Zebra’
(above) Celia Eberle, 'Hungry,' pastel on paper, 16 x 20 inches, 2010
(above) Celia Eberle, ‘Hungry,’ pastel on paper, 16 x 20 inches, 2010
(above) Margaret Meehan, 'Through Rose Colored Glasses' (detail)
(above) Margaret Meehan, ‘Through Rose Colored Glasses’ (detail)
(above) Bryan Florentin, 'Night Window 2'
(above) Bryan Florentin, ‘Night Window 2’

Bryan Florentin in the New Works Space. The photographs in Revised/Remodeled reference the view seen through the windows of a suburban house and collectively explore the relationship between window and picture, domestic space and gallery space, reality and representation. Starting from Mary Warner Marion’s observation that a simulation might be understood as “a category between the real and the false”, this work is situated in the space between the simulation and the depiction.

(above) Isabelle Scurry Chapman, 'Roseate Spoonbill' (Lint Series), mixed media
(above) Isabelle Scurry Chapman, ‘Roseate Spoonbill’ (Lint Series), mixed media

Isabelle Scurry Chapman in the lobby. Birds of Lint is a whimsical exhibition decorated with bird sculptures made of dryer lint, wire, thread, yarn, buttons, colored foil, sticks, dried flowers, seeds, shells and any other specimens the artist can get her hands on. The birds of lint fit quaintly into Chapman’s ethic of recycling. Isabelle’s work is a homage to nature and creating beauty out of the ordinary.

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