The Arts Council of Greater New Haven is pleased to announce Web Versions, its second show at Perspectives… The Gallery at Whitney Center at 200 Leeder Hill Drive, Hamden, Connecticut, south entrance. An artist reception will take place on Saturday, February 23rd from 2 to 4 p.m. There will be an artist talk at 1:30 p.m. and origami artist Benjamin Parker will be demonstrating his unique paper tessellations process.
Web Versions was curated by Debbie Hesse and Steve Olsen. According to Hesse, “While the title Web Versions suggests the online realm of virtual interconnectedness, this exhibit explores ways artists embrace the low tech, often labor-intensive material world to present meditations on the passage of time.”
Artwork in the show, diverse in media, by Sean Boggs, Kevin Daly, Sarah Beth Goncarova, Mary Judge, Benjamin Parker, Suzan Shutan, Marjorie Sopkin and Thomas Stavovy, share a fascination with repetitive pattern, scale and color to reference traditions of textiles.
Boggs’ oversized, swirling, bulls-eye wall sculpture, constructed from fake fur and googly-eyes, creates a compelling optical illusion. Googly-eyes, a simple craft supply that evokes childhood memories of toys, dolls and school craft projects, serve as a module to create an abstract, mandala-like motorized object that turns 360 degrees so slowly that only a few sections of googly-eyes gently flicker at a time.
Geometry plays a role in the paintings on view by Kevin Daly, who orchestrates brilliantly colored, hard edge abstract shapes that are slightly off kilter to confound perceptions of order and space.
Goncarova, in her large-scale textile sculptures, turns piles of muted, monochromatic, painted, ripped up canvas, thread, and beads into cavernous, organic topographies. These works, titled by the month(s) they were made, emphasizing the amount of time she spends creating each piece.
Mary Judge combines dry pigment and stenciled pinhole patterns in her mandalas, a process she adapted from Renaissance painting transfer techniques, that are both restrained and complex.
Benjamin Parker takes the craft of origami to new heights in his intricate, paper folding tessellations. His mathematically complex diagrams and patterns are the result of pleating and corrugating a single sheet of paper to create modular sculptural forms.
Suzan Shutan’s organic sculpture “Loopy” is an aggregate of rolled strips of tar paper formed into molecular-like structures that transverse a large section of wall. Her use of tar paper, made in part from asphalt, warns us that these playful, whimsical forms are, in fact, created from toxic materials; here she draws attention to sustainability issues such as our need for and dependence upon oil.
Marjorie Sopkin’s colorful pastel paintings, filled with overlapping, energetic and gestural marks, create a rich tapestry reminiscent of color field painting.
Thomas Stavovy’s etchings are drawn with delicate gestural meshes of interwoven lines that correspond to states of being.
Web Versions will be on view through March 30th, 2013. The gallery is open to the public Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4 to 7 p.m., and Saturdays from 1 to 4 p.m.
For more information about Web Versions and Perspectives...The Gallery at Whitney Center, call the Arts Council at (203) 772-2788.
