Bruno David presents four solo exhibitions by Leslie Laskey, Damon Freed, Sarah Harford and Jill Downen.
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 12, 2017, from 5 to 9 pm
Exhibitions Dates: January 12 – February 25, 2017
Gallery Talk with the artists: Saturday, February 11th at 4 pm
LESLIE LASKEY Duets
DAMON FREED Landscapes
JILL DOWNEN Cornerstone
SARAH HARFORD Swing
Leslie Laskey presents a new exhibition of recent paintings and sculptures titled “Duets”. He is an innovative thinker whose work never fails to make an impact on viewer perceptions. His new series “Duets”, created in the last two years in St. Louis, Key West, and Michigan, will not disappoint his followers and supporters. Leslie Laskey’s media of choice is ever changing, and characteristic of his work. In this new oeuvre, he incorporates collage, oil paint, acrylic, and crayon. It is this variety of media and style, which adds to the engaging quality of his work and its subsequent effect on viewers. In conjunction with the exhibition, Bruno David Gallery Publications will publish a catalogue of the artist’s work with an exhibition history and bibliography.
Damon Freed presents an exhibition titled “Landscapes”. In conjunction with the exhibition, Bruno David Gallery Publications will publish a catalogue of the artist’s work with an exhibition history and bibliography. Freed writes on this new series of work “I work directly from nature to create my charcoal drawings and I make fully chromatic oil paintings from the drawings afterwards inside of the studio. This is my process and much to do with the final paintings stems from the initial energy invested and displayed onto the surface of the drawings. The early marks in the drawings, the bold zags and swipes and squiggles feed the color and excitement of the paintings.
It must be said that my color is not naturalistic, or, at least not naturalistic in its faithfulness to nature. My color is faithful to my spirit, to the spontaneity and pizzazz of my sitting in nature in the spring and summer communing with the light of the sun, the invigorating wind, and amongst the delight of fresh cut grass, new growth, and scented flowers. My pictures are as much depictions of myself in this way as they are of the internal structure and sensations of nature.
And it is difficult to speak of structure considering my landscape paintings. The kind of structure I find in nature is often not rigid, but flowing and lively, like the emotions and the spirit. Even if architecture is a part of my vision, I paint it without an edge, without the strict laws of perspective. It is true that I start most of my paintings with a black outline of sorts, a loosely knitted structure. The color often comes later and is frequently informed by the energy of the drawn marks, tones, and squiggles, which is to say, my color does not follow the rules given us by nature. You may well discover a pink tree or a purple field in one of my paintings.
And this brings me to my indebtedness to the Post-Impressionist’s and to the Fauve’s use of color. It was van Gogh, Gauguin, Derain and Gabriele Munter and Matisse and Kandinsky that first utilized arbitrary coloration to fulfill their inner emotions and stylistic desires. Therefore, my paintings follow, in a way, this tradition of individualistic correspondence with nature.”
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In the Media Arts Room, the gallery presents a video work “Cornerstone” by Jill Downen. Downen, known for her white on white wall installations of abstracted bodily forms emerging from architecture, continues to draw on the idea that the human body shares an interdependent relationship to buildings. The three-minute video, created in 2008, zooms in on a stack of real bricks on the artist’s own body. The simple act of breathing, under the weight of building materials, captures a moment of time that is humorous, visceral, and vulnerable. The subtle and rhythmic sensibility Downen brings to video poses metaphoric possibilities about gravity, support and the protection of human fragility within the frame of architecture. While Downen’s art is rooted in site-responsive installation, “Cornerstone” is a video project characteristic of her interdisciplinary approach to uncover new aspects of established boundaries. Downen’s art is a focused investigation of the symbiotic relationship between the human body and architecture expressed in temporal installations, drawings, and models. Her art envisions a place of interdependent relation between the human body and architecture, where the exchanging forces and tensions of construction, deterioration, and restoration emerge as thematic possibilities.
Jill Downen has received numerous awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the MacDowell
In the “Window on Forsyth” space, the gallery continues to present “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.
Free and open to the public Wednesday through Saturday 10 am – 6 pm Also open by appointment info@brunodavidgallery.com
Bruno David Gallery
7513 Forsyth Boulevard
Clayton, MO 63105
info@brunodavidgallery.com
314.696.2377
WWW.BRUNODAVIDGALLERY.COM
