For this latest body of work, Cartagena spent time sifting through landfills on the outskirts of Mexico City to collect thousands of discarded photographs—portraits, snapshots, and tourist views. Cartagena excises figures, faces, or other details from the found photographs and reconfigures the original compositions by either moving the cut fragments or removing them entirely. The altered photographs remain strangely whole and strikingly familiar, compelling the viewer to consider what gives a photograph meaning. His arrangements reveal that seemingly crucial aspects of an image are both central and incidental to our ability to understand the works.

Cartagena is producing works of art specifically for this exhibition, giving visitors to the Eastman Museum the first opportunity to see the newest photographs in his most recent body of work.

StudioSession-849
Alejandro Cartagena (Mexican, b. Dominican Republic, b. 1977). Detail from Narciso / Narcissus, 2019. Altered gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist. © Alejandro Cartagena

About the artist

Cartagena lives and works in Monterrey, in northeastern Mexico. His projects employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban, and environmental issues. His work has been exhibited internationally and is part of public and private collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, and the George Eastman Museum.

Cartagena is also a self-publisher and co-editor of photobooks and has been published internationally in magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times, Le Monde, and the New Yorker. He is the recipient of several awards, including the international Photolucida Critical Mass Book Award, the Lente Latino award in Chile, and the Premio IILA-FotoGrafia Award in Rome.

ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA: PHOTO STRUCTURE / FOTO ESTRUCTURA
January 31, 2020 – June 28, 2020
George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY
ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA: PHOTO STRUCTURE / FOTO ESTRUCTURA
January 31, 2020 – June 28, 2020
George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY

Framing Specifications

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 114
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: unfinished ash frame
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Custom Wood Strainer: 1/2″ wood frame strainer

My work is a symbolic and narrative response to nature and seeks a balance between realism and abstraction. My primary subject matter has been the flora and fauna of Texas and my influences include Mexican and American folk art, 19th and 20th Century Japanese woodblock prints, natural history, field guides and botanical studies. Over the years I have become increasingly concerned and involved with environmental issues and have received commissions from Audubon Texas, the Texas Nature Conservancy and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation to produce color etchings and color lithographs featuring the flora and fauna of Texas that highlight those organizations’ conservation efforts around the state and the Gulf Coast.

Billy Hassell
September 2019

Billy Hassell MOCKINGBIRD color lithograph 8.5” x 24”

Billy Hassell GRASSHOPPER color lithograph 8.5” x 24”

Billy Hassell SKUNK color lithograph 8.5” x 24”

Billy Hassell BISON color lithograph 8.5” x 24”

About the artist

Billy Hassell has been making nature inspired paintings and lithographs for more than 25 years. His colorful and expressive art works, frequently featuring birds and indigenous plants and animals, have been exhibited nationwide and are included in the permanent collections of the Houston Museum of Art, the Fort Worth Modern, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Tyler Museum of Art and numerous other public and private collections. Articles on his work have appeared in ArtNews, Southwest Art and the New York Times.

Billy Hassell “Lone Star Wild”

October 19, 2019 – November 30, 2019

Davis Gallery Austin, Texas

Framing Specifications

Billy Hassell JACK RABBIT color lithograph 8.5” x 24”

Thin Gallery Frame

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 102
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: ash frame with black finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Custom Wood Strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer
Custom frame mats/sized boards: white 8 ply mat & 4 ply backing
Custom Frame Acrylic:  UV acrylic cut to size
Custom frame backing boards: 1/8″ archival coroplast

“The Best of the Best” records champion animals at the 2018 Minnesota State Fair, one of the most competitive animal contests in the world. Animal breeding, like photography, has been an area of both technical and material evolution. This series explores the relationship between the present and the past, drawing parallels between early animal contests at agricultural fairs and the first major exhibition of photography at the 1851 World’s Fair in London.

“In The Best of the Best, I wanted to document an event in which 12 pairs of animal species are judged supreme champion- the best of the best. Using a digital camera, I photographed winning exemplars of domesticated animals then combined 19th-century salt printing techniques and contemporary inkjet technology into images that emphasize changes in breeds over time and advances in photographic technology. It is science and art; it renders both an objective typology of animal husbandry and commentary on animal contests at this time and place. The hand-crafted portraits reference similarities between the history and development of photography and the advent of animal contests.”

Supreme Champion Boer Goat Male / Female Pair
2018 Minnesota State Fair, salt print over archival pigment print, 20 x 24″  2019

Supreme Champion Turkey Male / Female Pair,
2018 Minnesota State Fair, salt print over archival pigment print, 20 x 24 inches, 2019

The color red is a unifying element and a nod to French photographer Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, 1820–1910), who used the color in marketing his work. Historically, the color red has represented life, health, and victory. It also symbolizes a shared characteristic between the animals: the color of blood, whose principal ingredient is salt- an essential element for mammals and birds, that also propelled the evolution of photography.

Salt prints, a photographic process popular between 1839-1860, connects to photography’s historical roots; printing on them digitally connects to the present. The subtle tones of salt printing express mood and emotion, a contrast to the sharpness of a digital print. Subject, process, emotion, science, and combine to make both an immediate document and a comment on photography’s past, present, and future.

Supreme Champion Swine Male / Female Pair,
2018 Minnesota State Fair, salt print over archival pigment print, 20 x 24 inches, 2019

About the artist

R. J. Kern (b. 1978) is an American artist whose work explores ideas of home, ancestry, and a sense of place through the interaction of people, animals, and cultural landscapes.

His work has been exhibited in a number of notable exhibitions, including the Museum of Modern Art (Tbilisi, Georgia), the National Portrait Gallery (London, UK), the Yixian International Photography Festival (Anhui, China), and a solo exhibition at the Griffin Museum of Photography (Boston, MA). Awards and accolades include PDN’s 30 2018, Critical Mass 2018 Top 50, CENTER 2017 Choice Award Winner (Curator’s Choice, First Place), the 2017 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize (Finalist), and two Artist Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board (2016, 2018).

Public collections holding his work include the Center for Creative Photography, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, the Plains Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg.

R.J. Kern – The Best of the Best
August 8 – 31, 2019
Burnet fine Art & Advisory
Wayzata, MN

Framing Specifications

Supreme Champion Goose Male/Female (wing detail)

2018 Minnesota State Fair, salt print over archival pigment print, 20 x 24 inches, 2019

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 102
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: walnut frame with clear finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame – contrasting maple splines
Custom Wood Strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer
Custom Frame Mats/Sized Boards: 4 ply white mat
Custom Frame Backing Board:  3/16″ acid free foamboard cut to size

This exhibition takes an intimate look at the work of renowned photographer James P. Blair, who for more than thirty-five years traveled the world for the National Geographic Society. His images not only transport us to places most of us will never visit, the best of them have become part of our visual lexicon and remind us that the world is a varied and stimulating place, sometimes breathtaking in its beauty and at other times heartbreaking in its degradation.

Ketelie Regis and her baby, Haiti, 1987. Photo: © James P. Blair.

Coal Miner, South Africa, 1976. Photo: © James P. Blair.

Wild Goose and Kili Monastery, Russia, 1991. Photo: © James P. Blair.

About the photographer

James Blair prepared for a photographic future by studying with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind for a bachelor of science degree in photography at the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Between semesters he also photographed for Roy E. Stryker (director of the Farm Security Administration Photographic Documentation of the Depression) at the Pittsburgh Photographic Library. After graduation in 1954, he spent two years as a lieutenant (j.g.) in the Navy, part of that time assisting refugees from North Vietnam in Operation Passage to Freedom. He joined WIIC-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1958 as a reporter and film photographer.

As a freelance photographer, Blair had commissions from the U.S. Information Agency, Time, Life, and National Geographic magazine. He also put together a one-man show at Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, and co-authored Listen With the Eye, a book of photographs and poems, with Samuel Hazo.

Success with National Geographic assignments brought him to the staff of the magazine in 1962. He has had more than 45 stories published in the magazine, including major coverages of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ethiopia, West Africa, Iran, Russia, and Greece, and various parts of the United States, as well as articles on agriculture, coal, astronomy, and uses of photography in science. He covered southeast China for the book Journey Into China, published in 1982. He was the chief photographer for the National Geographic book on environment, As We Live and Breathe, and then continued his special interest in the environment with coverage of the disappearing rain forest, environmental pollution, and World Heritage sites.

There have been one-man shows of his work in Teheran, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., and he has been included in group shows in Atlanta and Washington. He is represented in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery (Washington D.C.), Canegie Mellon Museum (Pittsburgh), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Portland Museum of Art (Maine). National Geographic’s 1988 Centennial Exhibit “Odyssey” included several of his photographs. Blair is a regular instructor at the Maine Photographic Workshops, the Smithsonian Institution, and numerous other workshops, and has taught at the International Center of Photogarphy, New York. He was the first Distinguished Visiting Professor of Photojournalism at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism for the year 1992

Being There: Photographs by James P. Blair
May 24, 2019 – August 11, 2019
Middlebury College Museum of Art
Middlebury, VT

Framing Specifications

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 114
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
wood & finish: maple frame with clear water base finish
purchasing option: joined wood frame
custom wood strainer: 1/2″ wood strainer
custom frame mats/sized boards: custom cut 8 ply mat/4ply backing
custom frame acrylic: 1/8″ UV acrylic
Custom frame backing boards: 1/8″ archival coroplast

For centuries, Greek and Roman myths have inspired artists. New York University’s Grey Art Gallery is pleased to present a solo museum exhibition of the New York–based octogenarian artist Wally Reinhardt, who continues in this time-honored tradition. The exhibit features some 50 watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil illustrations from a series that numbers nearly 200. Reinhardt, who began working on this project in 1984, has focused solely on interpreting Ovid’s most acclaimed work of Latin poetry, Metamorphoses. Spanning 15 books, this oft-cited magnum opus from 8 CE has provided rich source material for Reinhardt’s witty and whimsical series, titled Pages from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Installed roughly in the same order that Ovid recounted his myths, Reinhardt’s graphic interpretations provoke a reconsideration of art making itself as a form of metamorphosis.

Wally Reinhardt “Theseus Slays the Minotaur”, 2003 Watercolor, gouache, Prismacolor colored pencil, graphite, and tape on prepared Arches paper, 18 x 22 in. New York University Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2018.2.30

Wally Reinhardt “Joves Makes Hercules a God”, 2013, Watercolor, gouache, Prismacolor colored pencil, graphite, and tape on prepared Arches paper, 18 x 33 in. New York University Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2018.2.62

Wally Reinhardt “Mercury Never Tells Argus the Story of Syrinx and Pan”, 1993, Prismacolor colored pencil and gouache on prepared Arches paper, 11 x 15 in. New York University Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2018.2.18

About the artist

Born in Washington Heights in 1935, Wally Reinhardt only began making art seriously at age 49. His fascination with Ovid’s monumental fifteen books of poetry, however, was ignited during the previous decade. While living in Rome in the 1970s with his late partner Robert Keyser, a Philadelphia-based painter who also taught at Temple University Rome, Reinhardt consistently encountered the city’s artistic interpretations of Ovid’s work. A patron of opera and ballet as well as an admirer of Renaissance and Baroque artists like Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Luca della Robbia, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Reinhardt began studying Ovidian-inspired artworks. Having never had formal art training, the artist acknowledges that the museums and the city of Rome itself were marvelous teachers.

Metamorphoses: Ovid According to Wally Reinhardt

January 9, 2019 – April 6, 2019

Grey Art Gallery at New York University

New York, NY

Metamorphoses: Ovid According to Wally Reinhardt Grey Art Gallery at NYU

Metamorphoses: Ovid According to Wally Reinhardt Grey Art Gallery at NYU

Framing Specifications

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 102
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple frames with pickled white & painted white finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Custom Wood Spacer: 7/16″ wood frame spacer
Custom Wood Strainer: 1/2″ wood frame strainer
Custom Frame Acrylic:  UV acrylic cut to size

I use my memory and imagination to invent pictures. The subjects I like to paint are ordinary—walls, ladders, rocks, trees, simple buildings, garden tools, ropes, bones, rickety tables. I strip subject matter of extraneous detail so that it appears emblematic rather than naturalistic. This also makes it possible to intermingle pictorial elements with abstract and semi abstract shapes. Such stylization allows fluid interrelationships between color, shape and symbol in a way that, I hope, communicates my wonderment at the mystery and uncertainty of existence.

David Hornung “Under Darkness” gouache on handmade paper
11 x 9 3/4″, 2018

David Hornung “Red Cloud” gouache and casein on handmade paper, 9 x 12″, 2018

David Hornung, “Night Garden” gouache on handmade paper
11 x 9 7/8″, 2018

About the artist

David Hornung studied painting at the University of Delaware where he received a BA and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he earned an MA and MFA.

After college Mr Hornung took a teaching position in the art department at Indiana University-Bloomington. Since then, he has supported himself primarily as a professor of painting, drawing, and color at a number of art schools and universities in the United States. These include the Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, Skidmore College, Brooklyn College and The Rhode Island School of Design. He is currently teaching at Adelphi University in New York.

Throughout his career, Mr Hornung has pursued painting and has exhibited widely. He has also made fabric constructions, collages and has recently begun to experiment with a way to combine collage and cyanotype.

While a student at the University of Delaware, Mr Hornung was deeply affected by a color course based on the teaching of Josef Albers at Yale. Color became a major consideration in his work and, at Skidmore College in 1982, he developed his first color curriculum for undergraduate art majors. When he came to The Rhode Island School of Design in the mid eighties, he continued teaching color to undergraduates in a variety of disciplines. There, he designed color curricula for painters, illustrators, textile designers and graphic designers working at times in each of those departments.

By the mid nineties, Hornung’s color course was offered every semester at RISD and, encouraged by a friend and colleague at the Art Institute of Chicago; he began to write a book based upon his color pedagogy. He was inspired by Edward Tufte’s 1990 publication, Envisioning Information and particularly admired the straightforward design of Tufte’s book and the way he placed his illustrations close to the text. Hornung decided to learn the software needed to design his book himself. After a 10-year gestation period, Color: A Workshop for Artists and Designers was published in 2005 by Laurence King Ltd, London. Since then the book has been translated into five languages and a second edition appeared in 2012.

David Hornung “Intimate Visions” 8/25/18 – 1/26/19 Delaware Art Museum

“Intimate Visions”
Paintings on Paper featuring David Hornung, Constance Moore Simon, and Zaneta Zubkova

August 25, 2018 – January 26, 2019

Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE

Framing Specifications

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 114
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple frame with pickled white finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame with matching splines
Custom Frame Acrylic: uv acrylic cut to size
Custom Frame Backing Board: acid free foamboard cut to size

The Blue Fold

In the exhibition, and book of the same name, Matthew and Julie Chase-Daniel share the art and poetry they produced during a month-long artist residency on Loggerhead Key that was facilitated by the National Parks Arts Foundation, in cooperation with the National Park Service ‘Volunteers in the Parks’ program.

Seventy miles west of Key West in the Dry Tortugas National Park, Loggerhead Key is located within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, created in 1975 to protect the third largest coral barrier reef system in the world. It is known for a decommissioned brick lighthouse built in 1858, light keeper’s brick cottage, small bunkhouse, and the ruins of a significant marine biology laboratory operated by the Carnegie Institute from 1904-1939.

While open to day visitors interested in the coral reef, nearby shipwrecks, and lighthouse, overnight stays are strictly limited to a small number of park service employees, interns, and volunteers.  Sustained effort and investment are required to maintain and repair the buildings & systems, and to monitor and restore the coral and other marine life, including endangered turtles and birds.

The month-long arts residency provides uninterrupted time to work and immersion in a natural environment free from many of the distractions of twenty-first century life. Power is produced by photovoltaic panels and water by a reverse-osmosis desalination system. The island has no telephone, cell phone or internet service.

Matthew and Julie Chase-Daniel arrived on September 1, but were evacuated less than a week later due to the impending arrival of Hurricane Irma. On September 20, they returned to the island, and remained there, alone and uninterrupted until October 10.

The Blue Fold explores perspectives, human and natural, of the island, climate change, sea level rise, coral reefs, Hurricane Irma, and disaster evacuation & recovery, through images, poetry and prose.

Matthew Chase-Daniel, Gorgonians, photography, 30 x 30 inches, archival pigment print on watercolor paper, 2017 from The Blue Fold series.

Matthew Chase-Daniel, Coconuts, photography, 30 x 30 inches, archival pigment print on watercolor paper, 2017 from The Blue Fold series

Matthew Chase-Daniel, Coconut Stems, photography, 30 x 30 inches, archival pigment print on watercolor paper, 2017 from The Blue Fold series

Matthew Chase-Daniel, Callyspongia Vaginalis, photography, 30 x 30 inches, archival pigment print on watercolor paper, 2017 from The Blue Fold series

About the artist

Matthew Chase-Daniel (né Chase) was born in Cambridge Massachusetts in 1965 and lived in New York City in the1960s.  He later raised tadpoles, minnows, and a raccoon, learned to fall off a horse, and hunt morels, wild violets, and rainbow trout in the Berkshire Mountains. In the mid and late 1980s, Chase-Daniel spent three years at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York (B.A.), and three years in Paris, France, where he studied cultural anthropology, photography, and ethnographic film production (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes & Sorbonne). Since 1989, he has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, renovating old houses, growing green chard, and making family and art.

His photography and sculpture have been exhibited across the U.S. and in Europe. He is represented in Santa Monica, California by Craig Krull Gallery.

He is the co-founder, co-owner, and co-curator of Axle Contemporary, a mobile gallery of art based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The Exhibition
The Blue Fold
April 5 ­– June 5, 2018
Eco-Discovery Center
Key West, Florida
Opening reception: April 5, 6pm

The Book Fold
The Blue
Explorations at Loggerhead Key, Dry Tortugas National Park
Matthew & Julie Chase-Daniel
Paperback, 116 pages
Axle Contemporary Press
2018, 8.5 x 8.5 inches
ISBN: 0996399143

Framing Specifications

114 unfinished maple

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 114
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: unfinished maple
Purchasing Option: cut to size with wedges
plastic spacer: 1/8″ clear econospace
Framing Advice: joining gallery frames

Graphic Discontent: German Expressionism on Paper has more than 50 prints and drawings in the exhibition dating from 1905 to around 1922. They present their responses to urban life, the nude, landscape, and war. Together they show how the Expressionists’ new graphic language disrupted and distorted traditional artistic themes to describe both a modern utopia and a hell on earth.

Tanzerinnen (Dancers), 1917. Emil Nolde (German, 1876–1956). Woodcut; 23.8 x 31.2 cm. Delia E. Holden Fund, 1960.158. © Nolde Stiftung Seebüll, Germany

Genesis II, 1914. Franz Marc (German, 1880–1916). Color woodcut; 24 x 20.2 cm. Gift of the Print Club of Cleveland, 1959.228

Portrait of a Man, 1919. Erich Heckel (German, 1883–1970). Color woodcut; 46 x 32.6 cm. John L. Severance Fund, 1991.109. © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Marsh Landscape, c. 1930–35. Emil Nolde (German, 1876–1956). Watercolor; 34 x 45.5 cm. Bequest of Dr. Paul J. Vignos Jr., 2011.125. © Nolde Stiftung Seebüll, Germany

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The beginning of the 20th century brought a surge of challenges to the prevailing styles and procedures for art making in Europe. Many young artists in central Europe rejected traditional training in state-sponsored art academies and formed groups with other artists who shared their desire to depart radically from what they saw as art’s emphasis on outward appearances. The groups Die Brücke (The Bridge), founded by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Erich Heckel in Dresden in 1905, and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), founded by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc in Münich in 1911, experimented together with form and technique, leading to groundbreaking publications and exhibitions. These and other artists working in Vienna and Berlin—collectively called the Expressionists—employed a condensed, abstracted visual language to access highly charged emotions or spiritual states.

Prints and drawings were essential to the Expressionists’ quest for art that was direct, frank, and immediate. Drawn from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection, Graphic Discontent: German Expressionism on Paper plots the purpose and impact of the graphic arts within the wider German Expressionist movement. Woodcuts—the most emblematic technique of the movement—were suited to the simplification and distortion of forms. New etching and lithographic techniques invited improvisation and promoted accidents in printing, while drawings revealed an artist’s impulse and urgency through direct marks on paper. These graphic media suited the Expressionists’ emphasis on the mystery and spontaneity of emotions.

Graphic Discontent: German Expressionism on Paper
January 14, 2108 – May 13, 2018
James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Gallery
Cleveland Museum Of Art Cleveland, Ohio

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Thin Profile: 114
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple frame with black opaque finish
Purchasing Option: joined painted frame
Custom Wood Strainer: 1/2″ wood strainer
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

The Art Institute of Chicago commemorates the centenary of the Russian Revolution with Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test, an exploration of early Soviet art and its audiences.  It is the largest such exhibition in the United States in more than 25 years.

Vladimir Stenberg and Georgii Stenberg. “The Mirror of Soviet Society,” cover for Red Field, no. 19 (May 1928). Ne boltai! Collection. Art © Estate of Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg/RAO, Moscow/VAGA, New York.

El Lissitzky. Photomontage for the International Hygiene Exhibition, Dresden, 1930. Alex Lachmann collection.

El Lissitzky. Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1920. Ne boltai! Collection.

Arkadii Shaikhet. Lenin’s Light Bulb, 1925. The Art Institute of Chicago, restricted gift of Joyce Chelberg. © Arkadii Shaikhet Estate, courtesy of Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition, running October 29 through January 15, 2018, presents approximately 550 works in fine and applied arts in ways that evoke their original spaces of display. The installation features ten such spaces: battleground, school, press, theater, home, storefront, factory, festival, cinema, and exhibition. In each space original works of art hang alongside reconstructions of Soviet objects, furniture, or standalone rooms, including a Workers’ Club by Aleksandr Rodchenko and a Demonstration Room by El Lissitzky. Demonstration is the point of the exhibition: to show the many ways in which Soviet art and thought helped create an atmosphere of open-ended discussion about the future.

The 1917 Revolution is not treated here as a foregone conclusion but as a spur to conversation and debate. Exhibition curator Matthew Witkovsky, Richard and Ellen Sandor Chair of Photography, emphasizes, “I have tried to avoid treating the events of 1917 as a closed subject, or to imply that what came after was fated. I am most interested by a pressing Soviet concern that I expect will always be timely: determining art’s forms and functions in a society of our own making.”

Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia! makes clear that to build a revolutionary society required rethinking life top to bottom. From paintings to dinner plates, every class of object needed restructuring; activities as disparate as brushing one’s teeth or building giant public works were freighted with symbolic as well as practical significance. The cultural output was accordingly diverse, resourceful, and at the same time frenetic in its pace. Russia after 1917 became a showcase of models: models for monuments, models for mass distribution, models for behavior.  This model exhibition allows visitors to better understand the circumstances of the 1917 revolution — and to consider what ideals are embedded in the things of everyday life today.

Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test

October 29, 2017 –  January 15, 2018
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Thin Profile: 114
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple frame with black opaque finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame with matching splines
Custom Frame Strainer: 1/2″ wood frame strainer
Custom Frame Backing: 1/8″ archival coroplast cut to size
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

The Cleveland Museum of Art presents two solo exhibitions featuring new works by Northeast Ohio artists Scott Olson and Jerry Birchfield.  This is each artist’s first institutional solo exhibition, and will be on exhibit at Transformer Station  September 1, 2017 – December 31, 2017.

Jerry Birchfield

The Earth Moves Under My Feet B.12, 2015. Jerry Birchfield (American, b. 1985). Graphite on paper, plaster; 26 x 19 in. © 2017 Jerry Birchfield

About the Artist

Jerry Birchfield’s practice revolves around the question of how images emulate or subvert the sources from which they stem from. Through complex photographic and sculptural processes, his works go through various stages of transformation, from surrogate to self-reference. The making of meaning is synonymous with the search for the beginning and the end.

“Debris, leftovers, the aftermath of other efforts, materials only partially identifiable––like the scene after an accident or disaster, only too clean for that, too controlled. And not the kind of unidentifiable that happens in real life after the car crash or flood, not the kind with real loved ones and family. This is the kind that happens on a primetime drama––the kind where nothing graphic is ever shown or seen, nothing vulgar, and if it is, it is theatrical enough that we know it isn’t real, it couldn’t be, not like this. It is too clean because it is contained. We can see its edges, we can see where it ends.

This un-identification deals in senses, or things already known. Specificity without. . . . It doesn’t matter that we don’t have more, that we don’t know. Broken pieces of wood and dust and dirt don’t have much more to offer anyway. Here they are the filler, the stand-in, and the placeholder. They are the articulation of their representation, an acknowledgment of what they do now rather than what they used to be. To know more about their past is both pointless and beside the point.”

– Jerry Birchfield

Scott Olson

Untitled, 2014. Scott Olson (American, b. 1976). Chalk on paper, unframed: 12 1/2 x 9 1/2 in. © Scott Olson

About the Artist

Scott Olson’s abstract paintings conceal the deliberate decisions and elaborate processes used in their making. By employing a broad range of techniques and materials, Olson traces the history of painting back to the early Renaissance. At the same time, through subtle shifts and the gradual introduction of new methods and concepts, his small-scale do nothing less than re-examine some of the medium’s long-established boundaries.

“Gesture is very important. It doesn’t have to be bombastic or incorporate your entire body. For me, it’s often my fingers or wrist resting on a bridge I’ve created above the painting. I’ve made some forms by gravity, dropping paint or flowing paint as I’ve worked on a flat surface. It’s organic or natural, a play between that and something more controlled or synthetic. I don’t think about it so much. It becomes an intuitive thing, a means to an end for achieving something else that may even undermine the formal aspects—the forms, figures, shapes.
More recently, and in small ways throughout, there have been subtle introductions of dimensionality or shadow or light––the optical mixing of paint through thin layers or the juxtaposition of dark and light. I think of that not as an inhabitable space, but rather something textural and shallow like the weave of a fabric. It’s still space, there’s dimensionality to that, but it’s not the most alluring or deceptive kind of space that draws you in.”
—Scott Olson

ABOUT TRANSFORMER STATION

The Bidwell Foundation has agreed to provide the Transformer Station to the Cleveland Museum of Art as its first footprint on the west side of Cleveland. For six months each year, the museum will have a venue for significant new contemporary art projects. The Transformer Station will serve as a laboratory, think tank and place for the Museum to uncover new opportunities, take risks and explore new ideas and new media.

Jerry Birchfield and Scott Olson
September 1, 2017 – December 31, 2017
Transformer Station
Cleveland, OH

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Thin Profile: 102 (modified 1 1/2″ depth)
Type: thin gallery frame
Wood & Finish:  maple frame with rising white finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame with matching splines
Custom Frame Strainer: 1/2″ wood frame strainer
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

Jerry Birchfield Exhibit

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Ultra Thin Profile: 114UT
Type: ultra thin gallery frame
Wood & Finish:  Maple frame with charcoal finish
Purchasing Option: joined frame with matching splines
Custom Frame Spacer: 1/4″ wood frame spacer
Custom Wood Strainer: 1/2″ wood frame strainer
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

Scott Olson exhibit