They all came down from the mountain when they heard the good news
Marc Horowitz, Colin Matthes, Lois Patino and Susie Tarnowicz
In association with Cow House Studios and Monster Truck Galleries & Studios
9th September – 5th October 2013
Wexford Arts Centre are pleased to present works of four artists from the residency programme at Cow House Studios Wexford, which was also shown in Monster Truck Galleries & Studios in March of this year. The artists were chosen by all three organisations and each artist spent ten weeks developing their work on residency, interacting with the co-curators from the three organisations and considering new works for presentation at both venues.
Marc Horowitz, Colin Matthes, Lois Patino and Susie Tarnowicz were participants in the 2012 Artist Residency programme. Their work represents a range of perspectives, mediums and working methods. This exhibition explores the disjunction between their observations and representations of environment, and how this separation alters perceptions of our landscape, private and public space, customs, traditions and habits.
Mark Horowitz (USA) artistic practice is wildly diverse. Often a response to the breakdown of a commercialized and consumer driven culture, his work employs humour and a quick, improvised and haphazard aesthetic. Object Tests are sculptures made from discarded commodities like old electronics, broken lawn ornaments or outdated promotional items. By combining these objects into delicately balanced compositions and photographing the result in high-key studio lighting, he re-purposes them as desirable items once again. The cadence of Horowitz’ Untitled Films mirror a continually accelerating visual culture. Observations of bizarre scenarios, formal curiosities and spontaneous activity are compiled into short sequences that serve as distilled Kino-Pravda. Horowitz’ drawings employ expressionist mark-making, comic illustration and text to form dynamic and humourous compositions. These works vacillate between narrative vignette and pure aesthetic experience.
http://marchorowitz.org
Colin Matthes (USA) makes paintings and drawings, prints, posters and installations. His work can be seen in galleries, abandoned shopping malls and on protest posters. Matthes has spent much of the past two years in Ireland, first attending a residency at the Burren College of Art then at Cow House Studios. While living in the Burren, Matthes worked on the Essential Knowledge series as a response to the wild and barren landscape. Looking to themes of resourcefulness and defiance rooted in both survivalist and DIY cultures, the drawings provide not-so-practical instructions for imagined and real scenarios ranging from Preparing Small Game to Landing a Plane in an Emergency. While at Cow House, Matthes worked on a series of large scale drawings addressing economic and environmental crisis. These apocalyptic scenes are borrowed compositions from Hollywood film posters, resulting in a narrative/disaster film mashup whose landscapes equally reflect many mounting failures including Katrina, Lehman Brothers, BP and the urban decay prevalent in post-industrial American cities.
http://ideasinpictures.org/
Lois Patino’s (Spain) current films are contemplative responses to immense landscapes. His compositions provide the privileged stance of an omnipotent force, eliciting the afterlife or a dreamlike state. These films reject conventional narrative form but use the linearity of film to induce an almost meditative state. Mountain in Shadow is an anthropomorphized imagining of a mountain, a theorized view she would have from her summit, who observes men sliding by her like insects on the skin of an animal. Beginning with bright white snow, the film becomes increasingly darker, shifting from representation to an unreal, dreamlike and spectral space, approaching the appearance of an artificially illuminated model. Playful depiction of scale, where the immensity of the mountain becomes muddled with a microscopic view, progresses with the development of the film. This treatment views landscape as a tactile experience: emphasizing texture, obfuscating its materiality and spatial dimensions.
http://www.loispatino.com/
Susie Tarnowicz (USA) makes paintings and drawings as well as short form writings. Her work is deeply rooted in her fascination with agricultural practice and her work on farms. Tarnowicz addresses, among many themes, a struggle for domesticity, shelter and sustenance from the land. Through the use of elaborate still-life setups Tarnowicz’ pantings and drawings represent an incoherent space of shifting planes and elongated forms that loosely resemble home interiors. Much of her work references personal experience, real people, places and names, but in place of clear exposition these elements are used as triggers to present a melancholy, repetitive and hopeful existence. Her writings, often made concurrently with her visual practice, are layered compositions, rooted in storytelling with spells of verse that are textural, amorphous, and imprecise and allusory in their use of language. Together, these discrete works share a compelling dialogue that simultaneously anchors the viewer in representation while presenting incoherent narrative and spatial shifts.
http://susietarnowicz.com/
For further information on the exhibition or the artists please contact Catherine Bowe, Visual Arts Manager on 053 9123764 or email catherine@wexfordartscentre.ie.
For further information on Cow House Studios please log on to http://www.cowhousestudios.com/
and for further information on Monster Truck Galleries & Stidios please log on to http://www.monstertruck.ie
