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STEVEN MONTGOMERY
Security Breach - 2002
painted glazed and reinforced ceramic
33 x 32 x 10.5 inches (83.82 x 81.28 x 26.67 cm)
Steven Montgomery "My interest in industrial imagery is completely aesthetic as I have almost no practical experience in any of the technical fields from which my work is derived. It has been through my understanding of the ceramic medium and its inherent limitlessness that I have been able to invent my own technology to suit my sculptural needs. My current work is a synthesis of conventional clay processes such as press-molding, hand-building, and wheel-throwing, fired at low temperature and painted to suggest the passage of time." Steven Montgomery, 2003
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DAVID JENSZ
Parallel Horizons - 2001
steel and mesh
122 x 142 x 136 inches (309.88 x 360.68 x 345.44 cm)
David Jensz My work is constructed. I work intuitively with materials, considering their intrinsic qualities. Materials have meanings and associations related to their physical nature, their use and our perceptions of them - symbolic, cultural and historical. Ideas occur as mental images and I prefer to make an idea before it becomes too concrete. I am interested to see where it will lead rather than make a predetermined object. Forces like gravity play a role in the final form of the work and size is an important consideration. Most of my ideas require a scale larger than myself, although the sculpture must also engage the viewer at an intimate level suggesting the potential existence of other layers.
In this exhibition my ideas have been influenced by physicists, such as Steven Hawking and Paul Davies, who have written about the origin and nature of our universe. They raise abstract notions about the world beyond daily experience: the universe may contain many more dimensions than four-dimensional space–time, gravity distorts and bends space and black holes might be gateways to other universes. I can only experience our universe in terms of four-dimensional space-time and it is difficult to imagine dimensions beyond that. Examining the relationship between known dimensions may elicit insight into others. I am interested in the extension of one spatial dimension into another. My work is most successful when it takes me outside my previous matrix of thought. I would love to see the universe from outside.
Ideas gradually become resolved as the work is constructed. The combination of materials sometimes suggests a sense of transformation, while simplicity in the work alludes to, or implies, greater complexity. A sense of balance held almost at equilibrium, implies the necessity for change.
David Jensz, 2004
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TOKUO NOGUCHI
Dragon #3 - 2001
cotton on abaca paper
34 x 24 inches (86.36 x 60.96 cm)
Tokuo Noguchi “Paper Construction” These works express the modulated relationship between nature and human by using images of a “mandala” and images of nature on handmade paper. Mandalas are from Buddhist culture. There are different styles of mandalas found in Asia and around the world. I am interested in the ideas surrounding the mandala that mean center and environment, cosmos, essence and sanctuary. Among its many functions, the mandala also has the ability to heal. A circle or group of circles, some of which have their patterns in nature, constructs a mandala. It is in these patterns that give me a personal sense of mandala. I equate the spirituality of paper making with the spirituality of the mandala, both of which preach harmony between nature and human. Thus giving me two opportunities to research my environment and to know my own reality.
Tokuo Noguchi, 2004
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NAIJUN
ZHANG
Barbershop - 2003
oil on linen
16 x 14 inches (40.64 x 35.56 cm)
Naijun Zhang My recent paintings consist of a study of scenes peopled by ordinary Chinese types engaged in everyday activities. In creating these paintings, I arrived at them by combining imagery borrowed from a wide variety of photographic sources and techniques that helped forge me as one of Socialist Realist heirs. I reconciled images that had no common origin and arranged my appropriations into pictorial compositions that are autobiographically very explicit and nostalgia for childhood. I studied oil painting from Chinese artists at Nanjing Art Institute whose mentors were none other than the Russian Academic Realists who introduce the method to China. This style and technical training is the historical progeny of Beaux Arts Painting tradition that was apogee of Western Art. I have been practicing this craft here in West Virginia with its laborious and disciplined approach to pictorialism. My experience growing up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution is visually expressed in these paintings. They not only produce a multifaceted portrait of China with contradictions but also show a respect for this mythical world of my formative years. My aim in these paintings is to examine tradition of Socialist Realist painting and cultural forces of Cultural Revolution and bring perspective on people who may see the world only from one viewpoint.
Naijun Zhang, 2003
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LAUREN ANNE HORELICK
Amphitheatre - 2003
molding paste and enamel
23 x 15 inches (58.42 x 38.1 cm)
Lauren Anne Horelick The importance of maps and what lines of demarcation indicate has been a source of inspiration in my pursuit to communicate the sociopolitical influence of the structures and cities we inhabit. The body of work I have titled "Architectural Intention" is the culmination of my experiments with alternative methods of drawing, and it aims to illustrate, in a global view, the idea that our structures psychologically mimic and manipulate the lives that take place in them. The drawings are derived from three sources, aerial views of cities, floor plans, and maps of my own fabrication. I began this body of work by appropriating floor plans and making additions and subtractions to the existing structures. I created stencils form these plans by removing the main structural elements, and then I rebuilt them on paper with a gel medium. Once the most minimal aspects of the cities and buildings are printed the underlying intentions of these plans become apparent. When all of the aerial views are placed together it is interesting to compare the origins, locations, and functions of each structure.
Lauren Anne Horelick, 2003
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