SITE/DISPLACE: Goldschmied & Chiari, Zipora Fried, Nadia Haji Omar, Halsey Hathaway, Kristen Jensen
Malcolm McClain, David Mramor, Ian Pedigo, Peter Rostovsky, Josh Slater, Letha Wilson
July 21 - August 15, Opening reception: Wednesday, July 23, 6-8pm, Summer hours: Mon-Fri 11-5

Kristen Lorello is delighted to present a group exhibition that features eleven artists working in photo-based practices, painting, collage, sculpture, and video.  The artworks in this exhibition combine a reference to place with a sense of disorientation or blurring.

In many works, layered imagery and geometric forms suggest movement and density within physical locations.  Halsey Hathaway's vertical canvas features geometric planes of purple and blue that appear to shift in front of the viewer.  In Letha Wilson's video Compass Rose, the camera follows the path of a person walking to and from a specific point within four outdoor locations: New York, Ireland, Niagara Falls, and New Mexico.  These separate walks co-exist alongside each other on screen so that the viewer experiences the walks simultaneously.  A shipping palette included within Ian Pedigo's work West Side Chandelier Catacomb lends a sense of mobility to the imagery of an architectural interior and street scene.  In Expanded Universe #1, Zipora Fried contrasts a darkened, tree-covered landscape on the right side of the image with a burst of light on the left of the image, proposing environment as both lucent and densely obscured.  In Nadia Haji Omar's Gold Mines, touches of gold leaf applied over a photograph of a vacant lot in Sri Lanka suggest traces of a former structure as well as hidden minerals coming to the surface.

Other works enmesh place and body through a direct reference to the human figure.  Josh Slater's collage, High Speed, made from book and magazine pages, combines views of mountains and buildings with before and after views of human teeth that have undergone reconstructive surgery, suggesting the transformative possibilities of a journey through the outdoors.  Kristen Jensen's porcelain sculpture, Like a Pearl Between Her Toes, relates the human body to the sea.  In Peter Rostovsky's Beach Scene 1, fog rolls over the scene of a family wading in the ocean, making the distinction between the beach and the swimmers less clear.  Goldschmied & Chiari's mirrored surface projects the viewer's image within a light pink haze so that the features of the body come in and out of focus.  In Malcolm McClain's etching on paper (c. 1952), linear forms repeat within the images of a walking figure and a path, stylistically relating figure to landscape.  David Mramor's John Doe echoes this sense of unity between figure and surrounding space; within the work, a male figure and his surroundings appear equally indistinct.