George Belcher: Sum x Dreams
School 33 Member’s Gallery
November 10-December 29, 2012
This exhibit of drawings, paintings and sculpture investigates advertisements, signs, flags, etc. Belcher alters these loaded images to create new meanings, questions, and stories that push these visuals sources toward the realm of the philosophical and the spiritual. By altering, distorting, and adding to these pre-existing forms of visual communication, the artist transforms them into stories or puzzles in which there is not necessarily a concrete answer or solution. Belcher creates disruptions and divergent courses in our everyday imagery and encourages the viewer out of mindlessness and into a space of re-examination and a new kind of truth.
Stroke: Gesture, Mark, Muscle in School 33’s Main Gallery
Curated by René Treviño
November 10-December 29, 2012
Artists: Jim Condron, Nicholas Cairns, T.J. Donovan, Kay Fenton, Laura Judkis, Matthew Langley, Jon Marshalik, Steven Pearson, Regina Tumasella, Carly Witmer
The Artists included in these exhibitions all use gesture, intuitive mark making and muscle in creating their work. As an artist and curator, René Treviño is drawn to art that is different from his own controlled, tight compositions and ritualized process. While the included paintings, drawings and sculpture all have a quality of speed and intuition, that speed and agility is actually the result of years of consistent studio practice and persistent dedication. The word “Stroke” in the title of the exhibit is meant to reference not only a brush stroke, but also any bold gesture that gives the work a palpable sense of energy. These works have the artists’ entire bodies built up within the bold marks and gestures; they are cathartic and full of fevered excitement even when the strokes are seemingly controlled in systematic compositions. The giant directional strokes, gestures and marks in the included works speak to strength, freedom, infallible confidence and a celebration of abstract art making.
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Tiffany Black: The Shedding Room
School 33 Project Space
November 10-December 29, 2012
“The thrashing in my chest is what made me want to shed in the first place. It happens when I when I witness in person injustices, when I put my faith in another person and they let me down; it happens when the ugliness outweighs the beautiful, and when I realize more and more the very realness of humankind’s submission to cowardice, selfishness, and power lust. The world has broken my heart, and I know I’m not the only one. As humans we struggle to understand, fight against and refuse to accept. Maybe this is why so many of us feel that we are spiritual beings, made of some essence that could never be limited to our physical or cerebral selves. We are more than what the world has given us, and it’s so easy to be let down by what the world has to offer.”
The artist’s struggle against the world brought a physical urge to stab wood, a cathartic repeated gesture that helped her channel her frustrations and angst and enabled her to begin “letting go”. In Black’s work, an installation of stabbed plywood boards mounted on the walls and floor of the Project Space at School 33 Art Center, she advocates for a holistic cycle of the daily human experience, a cycle that persists as we struggle through new experiences and perceptions and then strain to break free of them, a complete cycle of birth, growth, death, and regeneration. The Shedding Room unites the physical and emotional acts of separation, letting go, making way for regeneration. Here, a path to emotional freedom is physically manifested and celebrated.
