Van McElwee, Still from Travel Dream
Opening Reception: Thursday night, November 10, 2016, from 5 to 9 pm.
Exhibitions Dates: November 10 – December 23, 2016.
CHRIS KAHLER: METAPHEMERAL
KAHLIL IRVING: Undocumented
ANN WIMSATT: Not a Passive Journey
MICHAEL JANTZEN: Deconstructing My Chairs
SARAH HARFORD: Swing
VAN McELWEE: Travel Dream
Chris Kahler presents a new exhibition of recent paintings titled “METAPHEMERAL.” The new series offers a unique body of work emerging from the questioning of linear possibilities and systematic process. The new work pertains to the concepts of destruction and regeneration, and the rhythm of emerging forms. Kahler’s exploration of negative space, light, and intersecting planes has resulted in arresting juxtapositions of biomorphic and ephemeral forms. Similar to previous works he explores the “boundaries between physical and psychological time, between phenomena and the variable conceptual filters for understanding them.”
Kahlil Irving presents an exhibition titled “Undocumented.” The series explores the history of decorative ceramics, racism, and sculpture. Undocumented is a series that is culminating in Irving’s first solo exhibition at the Bruno David Gallery. Thinking through sculpture, Irving uses the ceramic multiple to be metonymic signifier of bodies. This is an interpretation of marching, congregations of people, or even a family reunion. Blackness is infinity; it is strength, it is power. Most recently, his work utilizes clay as a medium to encapsulate truths to last forever. Irving wants to challenge historical notions of colorism, structural barriers that separate communities, and objects that exist within those communities.
In the Front Room, the gallery presents a series of new prints titled “Not a Passive Journey” by Ann Wimsatt. Ann Wimsatt begins her work with a journey, traveling to important cities around the globe where she makes small ink and watercolor paintings of the city’s iconic public plazas and skylines. She then brings the works back to her studio for further scale and color investigations. Her compositions gain their unique emotional resonance through a nuanced layering of plein-air painting beneath a series of digital modulations. As the meaning and significance of cities is often hidden in generations of continual construction, likewise, the complexity of Wimsatt’s final prints reflect the enduring resilience of the cities she represents, alongside a contemporary narrative about the physical process of making paintings.
In the Media Arts Room, the gallery presents a video work “Travel Dream” by Van McElwee. An alchemy occurs when the outer world is transformed into video: it becomes mind-stuff. McElwee carries this process forward by questioning the nature of mediated reality, exploring time and dimensionality and by weaving fragments of the world into new patterns. His work is to create experiences that allow viewers to see and hear in new ways and that resonate in memory like a tuning fork. In this way video can enjoy the same freedom as painting and music; it can be something, not just about something.
In the Sculpture Room, the gallery presents “Swing” by Sarah Harford. Swing is a sculpture installation depicting a chandelier structure stranded with broken headlight and taillight plastic. The artist harvested these shards from the casted metal bodies that were once extensions of our lives, traded in for newer and updated versions of ourselves. A light timer switch, used to deter home invaders, signifies the imagery of headlights performing as household appliances. As the sequenced lighting ignites the suspended object, fractured shadows scatter across the space. This effect intends to unveil the presence of violence by challenging the viewer’s understanding of their everyday realms though the manipulation of structure and material.
In the Photo Room, the gallery presents a series of prints titled “Deconstructing My Chairs” by Michael Jantzen. Deconstructing My Chairs, is a series of photomontages that are part of a larger series of photomontages that visually deconstruct parts of the real world that we normally think of as stable and familiar. The images were randomly cut into pieces, and pasted back together in ways that reconstruct the original images into completely new forms. The new forms attempt to suggest ways in which the original chairs might take on new fanciful functions, as well as new hybrid images. The challenge is to retain just enough of the original chair image, so that the viewer can maintain some kind of a reference point of departure from it, to something new.
Wednesday through Saturday 10 am – 6 pm (Starting November 11, 2016)
Bruno David Gallery
7513 Forsyth Boulevard
Saint Louis, MO 63105
314.531.3030
