Curated by Charlotte Hallberg
CRUSH CURATORIAL/Chelsea is pleased to present ROMANTIC DESTINATIONS, opening July 13, from 6 – 8 PM and running through August 5, 2017.
LEAH BEEFERMAN, ANDREW GORIN, MEREDITH HOFFHEINS, DAN PERKINS, ALAN PRAZNIAK
Parallel vistas, soupy knolls in dimmed half-light, the acid color of an infinite gaze, the celestial lawn. ROMANTIC DESTINATIONS presents a vision of the natural world pressed through the custom filter of each artist’s observations. The land is a perennial subject, and our current landscape is mirrored, magnified, and enhanced through a growing gaggle of interfaces. A kind of simulated romanticism is woven through our everyday observations and influences the way we understand physical space, image quality, and the limits of imagination.
Leah Beeferman’s work shortens the field between that which is visible, and that which is not. Scanning the similarities between immersive observations and the science of observation on an atomic level her work treats light as a physical substance, suggesting that the blank and barren lands where she resides are actually quite full. Andrew Gorin’s poems are based on digitally mediated encounters with the landscape, both natural and constructed. Each subject is a location that Gorin has never visited, and which may not continue to exist in the coming century. Meredith Hoffheins’ paintings take great care in showing us discreet collections of domesticated elements. These places are familiar enough so that we wonder where the architects of these views have gone. Instead we are left with the touch of the artist and the vision of a halted traveler. Dan Perkins’ paintings fold and twist the familiar phenomena of the sky into the familiar language of our devices. Or is it the other way around? The Mobius strip quality of this relationship is made more mysterious by the tangibility of both the painted and depicted surface. Our eyes search and reach out, as if to touch the sky just by looking. Alan Prazniak’s landscapes exist in our dreams, where a place is that place, but not quite that place, and it has a different name, but it’s the same. Natural formations are strangers who we instantly trust, and we let them lead us on a long expedition. The longer it takes, the more rewarding it is.
Curated by Charlotte Hallberg in collaboration with Karen Hesse Flatow, CRUSH CURATORIAL.
Charlotte Hallberg is a painter who currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In 2010 she received an MFA in painting from Yale University. She was an Annenberg Fellow of Visual Arts from 2010-2012, and recently completed a residency at The Corporation of Yaddo. Her work has been shown at TSA NY, Crush Curatorial, and most recently MASS Gallery in Austin, TX.