SEPTEMBER 9 - OCTOBER 23, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, September 9, 6pm - 9pm

The double exhibition reflects upon the complexities of the natural world and human nature. In their distinct personal language both projects bear conceptual similarities where both artists creatively investigate the key issues of the modern life on our planet.  

Julian Montague: Landscape FeatureS

In Landscape Features, Julian Montague depicts the geological features and events that shape the physical landscape of the earth engaging the viewers in rethinking our current global conditions that clearly are not as simple as portrayed in the paintings. In their simplicity and stillness the images are meant to evoke the very slow, very long march of geological time. The static quality of the landscapes are inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e prints as well as the background landscapes found in cartoons and comic books.  As with Montague's past work, there is an interest in exploring the way in which language shapes our perception of the world. The text on each piece labels the isolated feature, some of the terms are technically specific (glacial erratic, cuesta, drumlin) others are more general (summit, coast, horizon). The terms that describe the features, like the features themselves, overlap one another. The combination of the text and the isolated element ask us to question the limits of our ability to subdivide the physical world into discrete categories.  

Alicia Ross: The Distress of Uncertainty 

In The Distress of Uncertainty, Alicia Ross weaves a complex narrative with penetrating explorations into the conflict between external societal pressures and internal dialog relating to the physical body and its connection to identity and sexuality. A skin-toned palette of stitched fibers presented on canvas embraces an intersection between hand-made domestic object and figurative painting. Individual female nude images are curated from online locales and then translated into embroideries comprised of stitches resembling skin, veins and tissue. Removed from their original context, these dislocated bodies are manipulated and abstracted into various states of fragmentation. In what are reminiscent of provocative poses, bodies open and divide giving way to a more dissected view of the body. The abstracted female forms made up of thread and fibers are supported, not only by the figures' arms and hands, but also by isolated threads reading as "connective tissue" between masses. The line is blurred between bodies that struggle to hold themselves together and ones that depict the reconstruction of one's self.  The distressed and fragmented appearance of the embroidered female forms materializes pressures placed on the physical body, and thus explores the resulting complexes from those competing internal and external strains.