CARMON COLANGELO: STORMS
April 4 – May 3, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday, April 4th, from 5:00 to 9:00 pm
THOMAS SLEET
Modem: Topology (Project Room)
LANA Z CAPLAN
Woman in the Dunes (New Media Room)
Storms is an exhibition of experimental mixed media prints by Carmon Colangelo created at Flying Horse Press. Using the processes of relief printmaking and chine-collé, Colangelo has developed a unique vocabulary of architectonic forms and fragments, repurposing discarded laser cut plates from architecture models, calligraphy, and maps to create turbulent spaces. This body of work explores storm patterns and environmental instability, marrying random male and female hurricane names in the title of each work: Jose & Joyce, Ernesto & Emily, Agnes & Andrew, Gustav & Grace, Barry & Bertha, Wendy & William, Odette & Otto, and Floyd & Fifi. These prints expand on Colangelo's interest in representing the dynamic shifts of our interconnected world. This show marks Colangelo’s seventh solo exhibition with the gallery. A fully illustrated book accompanies the exhibition.
In the Project Room, the gallery presents an exhibition “Modem: Topology” by Thomas Sleet.
In this current body of work, Thomas Sleet continues an investigation into the structural dynamics of repeating forms and the interrelationships between resultant internal and external spaces. The evidence provided by these experiments evokes natural structure, synthetic assembly and the possibilities of interface between. This work is inspired by methods of building found in nature; “I get inspiration from natural formations of earth, rock, and debris typically found along creeks, streams, and rivers.” The materials Sleet employs: cement, wood, ground red brick, carpet and mirror – echo the colors, textures and surfaces of these natural topographies. Thomas works primarily with recycled and reclaimed materials, and does so because there is a story or history inherent in these objects– like a spirit. Working with these material histories, [spirits] enables the artist to articulate concepts and principles that transcend specific composition, material bias and scale. Shape and form evoke function and includes both positive and negative form function. Meaning that the positive form can serve as vessel, shell, solid or fluid and the surface can even be permeable: Effigy, shrine, vestibule, crucible, reservoir, altar, vessel, obelisk, and portal.
In the New Media Room, the gallery presents a video work “Woman in the Dunes” by Lana Z Caplan. Named after Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1964 film, which was based on the Kobe Abe novel Suna no Onna (1962), Woman in the Dunes is a looping video installation shot on the Amalfi Coast of Italy. In the video, a darkly tanned mother holding her child in her arms walks slowly into the deep azure water. Step by step they are subsumed, the child resting her head on the mama’s shoulder, trusting her completely as they are increasingly submerged. As they reach the water level to the child’s neck, she tips her head away from the mother, bending backwards into the water. The mother dives head first into the water. In what feels like an eternity, several seconds pass as we wait for them to surface. They do not…. only the mother emerges, further out to sea than where they disappeared. She swims into shore, slowly, skillfully and alone. As in Teshigahara’s film, a task of domesticity, here motherhood is alluded to as an endless cycle of struggling for survival with the encumbrance of the child, and no end in sight. Each time the loop repeats, the woman makes a choice between her role as a mother with the dependence of the child or the freedom of the individual. There is beauty in both options, the natural and familiar image of the baby carried on her hip like an Italian Madonna, and the graceful dive and smooth strokes of the confident, solo swimmer. But there is also tension and danger in the depths of the water. While the horizonless expanse of water undulates, the viewer is left to wonder, what’s become of the baby.
Hours: Wed-Sat 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
BRUNO DAVID GALLERY
3721 WASHINGTON BOULEVARD
SAINT LOUIS MO 63108
1-314-531-3030
info@brunodavidgallery.com
WWW.BRUNODAVIDGALLERY.COM
