Decoy: Look again… things are never quite what they seem. The six artists featured in DECOY employ a range of methods to lure the viewer but all leave us questioning our certainty of what is familiar, what is beautiful, what is reality and what is illusion.
Works by Kendra Hebel, Robert Horvath, Paul Jeanes, Michael Mansfield, Jenny Mullins, and Kimberly Ruppert
Curated by Erin Cluley
Jenny Mullins
Opens Sat May 2, 6-8pm. Gallery Talk Thu May 28, 7pm.
On view May 2 – May 30, 2009
Paul Jeanes’ paintings of quixotic sunsets are romantic, golden, sublime – but also capture small interruptions at the corner of your eye: police helicopters hovering in the not-so-far distance, birds migrating, and commercial airplanes. In his large-scale drawings, Michael Mansfield re-interprets the traditional landscape by using satellite imagery as his point of reference – rearticulating digital data into an aerial landscape that exists between the imaginary and the idealized. Kendra Hebel’s beautifully crafted dress constructions of hair and latex challenge our natural responses with symbols of beauty and monstrosity, side-by-side. As a metaphor for the seductive power of consumerism, Robert Horvath hypnotizes with slick, candy-colored paintings that reveal a dark and empty void upon closer examination. Jenny Mullins dominates the patterned, animal-like characters in her drawings – constricting them with leather belts or encasing them in giant suits of yellow hair, leaving you uncertain if they are the villain or the victim. Kimberly Ruppert’s larger than life, de-constructed cube sits in the gallery space demarcating the illusion of volume and space. What initially appears to hold extraordinary weight is actually a simple (almost fragile) deconstruction of linear elements.
Main Gallery, Creative Alliance at the Patterson
3134 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, MD
www.creativealliance.org
