Sunday, February 28, 2021

GROWTH - Exhibition March 1 - May 31, 2021


GROWTH - Rhombus Space - Exhibition Dates: March 1 - May 31, 2021


Rhombus Space is pleased to present our first online exhibition entitled GROWTH, featuring work by Ward Yoshimoto, K. Tauches, Mel Prest, Damien Olsen, Rhia Hurt, Petra Gupta Valentova, MaDora Frey, and Samanta Batra Mehta. In response to our current world constrained by the realities of the pandemic, Rhombus Space will be celebrating art and the exchange of ideas through a series of online art exhibitions. In GROWTH,  the first of the series, four artists whose work seems to evoke notions of growth were asked to participate and to invite another artist whose work could also be in dialogue with the exhibition’s theme. Each artist is exhibiting two artworks. In contrast to the restrictions that the virus has enacted in our society, GROWTH, sets out to champion the nurturing and expansive aspects of life. All of the artists in this exhibition engage in creative processes that resonate with generative design.


Ward Yoshimoto and Damien Olsen are both sculptors who make work through an additive process. They share a maximal aesthetic that comes together through the assembling of smaller building blocks. Yoshimoto works between assemblage and wire sculpture. He employs humor and social critique that is implied in the narrative content of the work as well as the material metaphor of the objects he selects. Olsen is invested in the assembling of wood and mixed media. His elaborate approach amplifies form and structure through the deliberate formal unifying technique of limiting his color palette.


K. Tauches and MaDora Frey are both interested in how we relate to the natural landscape. Tauches is presenting works from two series; Disappeared Houses, and MTN Top Removals. These works are artistic intervention as a form of imagining nature’s return to the environment.  Frey’s interest in presenting the mysterious, ineffable, and sublime experience in nature, resulting in sculptures that are made in nature after hiking onto location and responding to both the terra firma and flora and the atmospheric qualities of changing light. 


Mel Prest and Rhia Hurt explore additive abstraction in their paintings. Both artists work in a visual language of non-objective abstraction with deliberate mark-making. Prest’s all-over geometric compositions focus on linear patterns that create an energetic optical vibration. Hurt’s paintings are also precise in their selective approach to mark-making, and her forms are ovular and organic. Hurt’s paintings capture unique composite forms that look like unknown flowers and plants. Hurt allows the organic qualities of water and paint pigment to set as the moisture evaporates to create forms and unexpected patterns - finished off with collaged mixed media elements. 


Petra Gupta Valentova and Samanta Batra Mehta investigate ideas of femininity and identity in their work. Gupta Valentova uses embroidery as a drawing tool in her recent cyanotype works. Embroidery is a slow drawing process that links to the craft and labor of women. At times nearly invisible, embroidery emerges over time and connects the line and shape elements in the artist’s work. Batra Mehta's work explores ideas of identity and the interconnectedness of the feminine and nature. Her elaborate garden drawings echo the tradition of detailed miniature painting and botanical illustrations.



Curated by: Katerina Lanfranco

www.rhombusspace.com

http://www.samantabatramehta.com

https://madorafrey.com

https://petravalentova.wordpress.com

http://rhia-hurt.com

http://www.damienolsenarts.com

https://www.melprest.com

http://www.wardyoshimoto.com