YVETTE DRURY DUBINSKY and VICKY TOMAYKO Steamroller Collaborations
TAYLOR YOCOM (New Media Room) Romance: a feeling of excitement or mystery associated with love & (Project Room) It’s Romantic
THOMAS SLEET (Window on Forsyth) Volcanoa
Opening Reception Thursday, May 16. 5-8 pm
May 16 – June 21, 2019
Gallery Talk: Thursday, May 16 at 7 pm (During the Opening Reception)
While participating in a public arts event in Truro, Massachusetts, artists Dubinsky and Tomayko each made stencils, then together they combined the stencils, alternately inking them and using them to resist the ink, and placed them on a concrete surface to be pressed by a steamroller. Both artists felt that the initial results needed additional work and, in an almost humorous and fearless attempt to both aid and salvage the work, they continued working. The one-day project launched a vitalized collaboration to create new monotypes and collages.
The collaboration gained increasing momentum when relocated to Dubinsky’s studio. There the partnership continued over the course of several months, using a 38-inch press, a range of paper, additional stencils, and inks. The joint work culminated in this series. Steamroller Collaborations was initially exhibited at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, NY in March and April of 2019.
Though abstract, it is inspired by the trails and beaches of Cape Cod’s National Seashore where the two artists live and often walk together. In this body of work Dubinsky and Tomayko make certain apparent observations on nature, color, shapes, and atmosphere. Issues regarding their collaboration itself, politics, the global environment and its discontents, are more subliminally present.
Bruno David is pleased to present a new video work by Taylor Yocom, Romance: a feeling of excitement or mystery associated with love, in the New Media Room and a series of photographs, It’s Romantic, in the Project Room. Romance is defined as “a feeling of excitement or mystery associated with love.” In this video, Taylor Yocom explore romance as a concept that is manifested through a set of gestures and icons. This sequence of images focuses on tropes of romance and objects loaded with romantic connotations: glasses of champagne, swan figurines, a bouquet of red roses.
Cut to the brass padlocks – she paints them pink. She said “I am reminded of how pink is used as a calming color. Forget your worries. Look through the rose-tinted glasses. I unlock them – add them to the tiny wooden bridge in my studio. The city of Paris warns tourists against leaving their signs of their love on the bridges. The infrastructure can’t take the locks anymore.” She adds more locks to her bridge. The dowel falls closer to the ground. It finally crashes – flash to the images we saw earlier. But the champagne is flat, the figurines are cheap plastic, and the rose buds get chopped from the stems. Through creating an uncomfortable and destructive setup, she alludes to how despite the beauty of romance, the concept can be used to facilitate power imbalances. Situated within the “city of love,” Romance: a feeling of excitement or mystery associated with love simultaneously celebrates the beauty of romantic gestures while leaving an ambiguous space for reflection on the ways romance can be taken too far.
Bruno David is pleased to present Volcanoa, a sculpture by Thomas Sleet on view 24/7 in the gallery’s vitrine space Window on Forsyth. 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.
Sleet 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.
Public Hours Tuesday through Friday Noon – 6:00 pm and open by appointment. Open Saturday when noted on website. Closed Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays
Bruno David Gallery
7513 FORSYTH BOULEVARD
SAINT LOUIS MO 63105
314.696.2377
masked.jpg)
