- Current Exhibition
- Past Exhibitions
- Upcoming Exhibitions
CURRENT
December 15th, 2011 - February 18th, 2012
Paul Swenbeck
Dor and Oranur
For his third exhibition at the gallery, Paul Swenbeck presents Dor and Oranor, comprised of two sculptural tableaux of a prehistoric drama. On the largest "stage" in the main gallery, ceramic works that appear more flora than fauna are engaged in a symbolic battle for life. Otherworldly in color and form with towering stems and spindly tendrils, these predatory animals are easily confused for flowering, alien-like plants. Adjacent to this main installation, the artist will install a cave-like ritual space that might belong to man's earliest ancestors. Orange and blue lighting and a sound piece created in collaboration with Aaron Igler add to the strange and dramatic atmosphere of the installation. With darkness and humor, Swenbeck evokes life's energy and cycles in the most ambitious installation of his work to date.
Joan Nelson
Joan Nelson is well known for her paintings that incorporate multiple pictorial landscape traditions and pay homage to and borrow from artists such as Albrecht Altdorfer, Albert Bierstadt, George Caleb Bingham and Casper David Friedrich. Occupying a unique place in the long history of landscape painting, Nelson's works simultaneously speak to the experience of landscape and the complexity of representation, artfully incorporating reality, memory and mediated experience.
At Fleisher/Ollman, fifteen works from a series of constructions or boxes that have never before been exhibited will be on view. Initially inspired by Salvador Dali's 1934 work, The Little Theater, Nelson began to push her paintings further into the realm of objects by exaggerating space by separating parts of the landscape onto different planes. Using the folk art tradition of reverse painting on glass, Nelson embraces the surprise and inventive nature of this technique as she depicts a cave, grove of trees, cold stream or lush field. Each work is comprised of up to six layers of glass that are housed within a homemade wooden box, itself painted and considered. Inside the boxes, Nelson completes the dioramas by stashing various trinkets and souvenirs such as moss, rocks, sticks, glitter, toys, glass ornaments and beads, and mirrors. The resulting works are gem-like, mysterious and infinite, despite their intimate scale.