Source
Glen Cunningham, Mark Dagley, Laura Fayer, Molly Herman, Lori Kirkbride, Ben LaRocco and Rachael Wren
Organized by Susan Ross and Melissa Staiger
April 22nd through May 28th, 2010
Source is organized by curators Melissa Staiger and Susan Ross.
The group show features work by seven contemporary abstractionists who share concerns of feminine influence, antecedent and identity.
Abstraction may seems like an outmoded relic to some. Yet Staiger and Ross have brought to bear not only a keen understanding of where it’s been but a positive sense of where it’s going. The result makes abundantly clear the extent to which even relatively recent styles are being freed from their presumed periods.
These seven artists all exhibit roots in the concept or experience of femininity–whether a 19th Century Swedish mystic, Palm Beach fashion designer Lily Pulitzer, the work of Helen Frankenthaler or the Yin-oriented Japanese aesthetics known as wabi-sabi. They each trace their work back to some decisively feminine factor.
The very diversity of influences the artists acknowledge belies the simplification of placing them all under the umbrella of “Abstraction”. The seven—Lori Kirkbride, Glen Cunningham, Mark Dagley, Molly Herman, Rachael Wren, Ben LaRocco and Laura Fayer—while all nominally abstractionists, range in approach from Kirkbride’s preoccupation with color and pattern to LaRocco’s almost mystical appropriation of forms from the psyche.
