Six artists interpret the meaning of repetition in “Recurrence,” the newest Mandeville Gallery exhibit.
Featured are 22 works, from oil and watercolor paintings to collage, by Kira Nam Greene, Juan Hinojosa, Simone Meltesen, Karen Schiff, Sam Vernon and Rachael Wren.
“In exploring everything from pop culture to identity formation, these artists delve into the multitude of ideas surrounding repetition in a way that is accessible and invites conversation,” said Julie Lohnes, curator of Art Collections and Exhibitions. “Like many other forms of intellectual endeavor, the arts have long been fascinated with this concept.”
The show runs through April 10 on the second floor of the Nott Memorial, with a reception set for Jan. 20, 5-6:30 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public.
Historically, Lohnes noted, an artwork was considered one-of-a-kind until artists such as Degas, Monet and Matisse began working serially and repeating the same themes or motifs, be they dancers or Chartres Cathedral painted at various times of day. More recently, visual artists such as Sherrie Levine, Jeff Koons and others have used concepts of reproduction in a contemporary art context.
In “Recurrence,” the artists bring a variety of perspectives to their work.
In her paintings and drawings, Greene negotiates the duality and dichotomy of being an Asian immigrant woman in America.
Hinojosa constructs complex collage-drawings from found objects, such as MetroCards, computer disks and other everyday trash, in his desire to “intimately challenge greed, obsessive consumption and the social stratification of American culture.”
Meltesen’s paintings, with their empty horizons, blank canvas, erasures and extractions, are “explorations of lesbian feminist formalism… rooted in the modernist weaving designs of the Bauhaus and the 1970s feminist reclamation of domestic patterning.”
Using text as a foundation, Schiff’s abstract drawings strive for “a sense of space that is regular and structured, yet unpredictable and ever-changing,” while Vernon’s installations combine photocopied drawings, photographs, paintings and sculptural components to explore personal narrative and identity.
Wren, a painter, uses geometry and an accumulation of small, repeated brush marks of subtly shifting color to express her fascination with ephemeral atmospheric and natural phenomena, such as fog and light playing between tree branches or clouds.