Claude Collins-Stracensky, Untitled (the willing suspension (of disbelief)
John Opera, I-6
Exhibition: “Over the City and Through the Woods”, curated by Fritz Chesnut, June 17th - July 17th, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, June 17th, 7-10 pm
Artists: Claude Collins-Stracensky, Bryan de Roo, Drew Heitzler, Oliver Irwin, Marie Jager, Gordon Matta-Clark, John Opera and Colin Roberts
Statler Waldorf Gallery is pleased to present “Over the City and Through the Woods.” The works in the exhibition focus on the organic within the context of the urban landscape. Some artists use flora as a
physical presence in their work while others use processes, such as growth and accumulation, that are drawn from the natural world.
Claude Collins Stracensky's photograph Untitled (the willing suspension (of disbelief) captures a found object from his garden: pine needles suspended by a spiders web inside a glass vase. Bryan de Roo's watercolor Information Overload uses symmetry and accumulation to evoke a futuristic cellular architecture. Drew Heitzler's Spiral Jetty/Crystal Voyager/Region Centrale (Bootlegged, Re-ordered, Combined, Sometimes More, Sometimes Less) combines three experimental films from the same era which obliquely center on our experience of land and water, "creating a synchronicity which is both strange and revealing." Oliver Irwin's A Plant That Dances To The Macarena animates a living bush into a dancing toy. Marie Jager's Pollution Paintings are made by leaving primed stretched canvases outside to collect dust and dirt, becoming visual recordings of city air. Although known primarily for his cut buildings from the 1970s, Gordon Matta-Clark is represented here by his drawings. Matta-Clark took his inspiration from trees and their energy, incorporating arboreal forms, arrows and fans which attempt to give form to flux. John Opera's anthotype photographs are printed by using the juice of beets, blueberries, pokeberries, chokeberries and several varieties of lilies. In Colin Roberts' Car With Leaves, gardening is used as a metaphor for the human condition of fragility.