July at 311
Lincoln Hancock
A Bird, Not a Feather
July 2-30, 2010
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
In a lecture delivered at Harvard in 1985 (posthumously published in Six Memos for the Next Millenium), Italo Calvino describes lightness as expressive of a certain kind of possibility in face of “the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world” (4). Calvino’stalks at the Charles Eliot Norton lectures were centered on literary values, but painting — indeed, the entirety of the art experience — has always been about this for me. In art, I look for a space outside of the enumerable into which to leap.
This urge is pervasive. Art is a practice that informs life, and provides ways to elude Medusa’s gaze. Calvino takes the myth as poetic allegory: “Perseus’s strength always lies in a refusal to look directly, but not in a refusal of the reality in which he is fated to live; he carries the reality with him and accepts it as his particular burden”. So, to fly up and out of the panopticon of fixed
meaning and moral surveillance is not a wanton act. It is a creative, meaningful gesture enabled precisely by an acknowledgement
of its situatedness and necessary relationship to the world. As Calvino indicates, lightness entails looking at the world “from a
different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification”.
My nonrepresentational paintings are not indicative of a wish to abandon the incumbencies of the world. They are, rather, paeans
to the possibility of the here and now — a possibility and potency too often neglected by conventions of being and seeing. For if there is a chance to find resonance and meaning in simple structures of color and line, our position as empowered, creative, agents is reasserted. We need spaces and monuments that sanction things not quantifiable, indexible, mechanically
apprehensible. These moments help us transcend, and remind us that things mean for us — not the other way around.
My mixed-media work draws on my ongoing photographic practice, which is itself informed by the same values. The improvisatory process of taking pictures helps me come away with impressions of my lived experience that avoid being weighed down by the prefab fixities of existing systems of meaning. I shoot in ways that privilege spontaneity over perfection, because yielding to “the way things are supposed to look” already forecloses on the possibility of potent new awareness. In select pieces for this show, I have chosen for the first time to collaborate with my longtime friend Benjamin Spiker, whose photographs always push me farther into other views on our shared experiences.
Calvin Tomkins writes in the Preface to his recent book, Lives of the Artists, that contemporary art practice is “…among other things, an approach to the problem of living.” Problem, weight, opacity — from a certain perspective these words sound like detractors. But lightness is an expressive center that leverages our intentional relationships with the substantial qualities of the
world into a radical remaking — as Calvino alludes, it is a “balance of forces that enables heavenly bodies to float in space”.
A Bird, Not a Feather
July 2-30, 2010
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
In a lecture delivered at Harvard in 1985 (posthumously published in Six Memos for the Next Millenium), Italo Calvino describes lightness as expressive of a certain kind of possibility in face of “the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world” (4). Calvino’stalks at the Charles Eliot Norton lectures were centered on literary values, but painting — indeed, the entirety of the art experience — has always been about this for me. In art, I look for a space outside of the enumerable into which to leap.
This urge is pervasive. Art is a practice that informs life, and provides ways to elude Medusa’s gaze. Calvino takes the myth as poetic allegory: “Perseus’s strength always lies in a refusal to look directly, but not in a refusal of the reality in which he is fated to live; he carries the reality with him and accepts it as his particular burden”. So, to fly up and out of the panopticon of fixed
meaning and moral surveillance is not a wanton act. It is a creative, meaningful gesture enabled precisely by an acknowledgement
of its situatedness and necessary relationship to the world. As Calvino indicates, lightness entails looking at the world “from a
different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification”.
My nonrepresentational paintings are not indicative of a wish to abandon the incumbencies of the world. They are, rather, paeans
to the possibility of the here and now — a possibility and potency too often neglected by conventions of being and seeing. For if there is a chance to find resonance and meaning in simple structures of color and line, our position as empowered, creative, agents is reasserted. We need spaces and monuments that sanction things not quantifiable, indexible, mechanically
apprehensible. These moments help us transcend, and remind us that things mean for us — not the other way around.
My mixed-media work draws on my ongoing photographic practice, which is itself informed by the same values. The improvisatory process of taking pictures helps me come away with impressions of my lived experience that avoid being weighed down by the prefab fixities of existing systems of meaning. I shoot in ways that privilege spontaneity over perfection, because yielding to “the way things are supposed to look” already forecloses on the possibility of potent new awareness. In select pieces for this show, I have chosen for the first time to collaborate with my longtime friend Benjamin Spiker, whose photographs always push me farther into other views on our shared experiences.
Calvin Tomkins writes in the Preface to his recent book, Lives of the Artists, that contemporary art practice is “…among other things, an approach to the problem of living.” Problem, weight, opacity — from a certain perspective these words sound like detractors. But lightness is an expressive center that leverages our intentional relationships with the substantial qualities of the
world into a radical remaking — as Calvino alludes, it is a “balance of forces that enables heavenly bodies to float in space”.
Opening July
Do Not Kill Me
Paintings, Drawings, Monotypes by Janelle Howington
“The face is present in its refusal to be contained.”
“Before any attribute, you are other than I, other otherwise, absolutely other!”
-Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas studied philosophy as a young man in Lithuania prior to World War II. He lost his family in the Holocaust and then grappled for the rest of his life with the problem of killing, how it was possible that an advanced Western society could perpetrate genocide. His philosophy of ethics centers on the absolute alterity of the human face, how the infinity
of the face, our inability to quantify and contain it, calls out to us and says, “Do not kill me.”
I began this project by videoing my family members telling a story from our shared history. I then sifted through the footage for stills of expressions they make that are unique to them, that are fleeting, and that have not previously been recorded. My impulse was to capture something, to record and reserve what I see in my minds' eye when I think of these people. I had no delusions of succeeding.
I am a non-believer. It has been my experience that Art generally fails to live up to its mythology, that its persistence is evidence less of our need for the products of artists, and more of our need to create, to exist outside the fragility of our own bodies, and to mark a place for ourselves in the world and in time. My attempts at representing the faces of my loved ones are a compulsion. They are intentional failures.
Janelle Howington
Paintings, Drawings, Monotypes by Janelle Howington
“The face is present in its refusal to be contained.”
“Before any attribute, you are other than I, other otherwise, absolutely other!”
-Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas studied philosophy as a young man in Lithuania prior to World War II. He lost his family in the Holocaust and then grappled for the rest of his life with the problem of killing, how it was possible that an advanced Western society could perpetrate genocide. His philosophy of ethics centers on the absolute alterity of the human face, how the infinity
of the face, our inability to quantify and contain it, calls out to us and says, “Do not kill me.”
I began this project by videoing my family members telling a story from our shared history. I then sifted through the footage for stills of expressions they make that are unique to them, that are fleeting, and that have not previously been recorded. My impulse was to capture something, to record and reserve what I see in my minds' eye when I think of these people. I had no delusions of succeeding.
I am a non-believer. It has been my experience that Art generally fails to live up to its mythology, that its persistence is evidence less of our need for the products of artists, and more of our need to create, to exist outside the fragility of our own bodies, and to mark a place for ourselves in the world and in time. My attempts at representing the faces of my loved ones are a compulsion. They are intentional failures.
Janelle Howington
Coming to 311 in May
Ripple &Van Bork
Graphic Explorations of Printmakers Kristianne Ripple and Felicia van Bork
May 7 - 31, 2010
Artists talk/demo: Sunday, May 16, 3 - 4pm
Artists Reception: Sunday, May 16, 4 - 6pm
Felicia van Bork received her MFA in 2009 from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design's low residency program at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown MA. The monoprints shown are pieces she created in January,2010, in The Print Studio at 311.
Kristianne Ripple graduated from Alfred University with a BFA in Printmaking and Graphic Design. Since then she has been a printmaking presence in Raleigh. She has a studio at 311 West Martin Street where she combines everything from woodcuts to lithography to create her prints.
Graphic Explorations of Printmakers Kristianne Ripple and Felicia van Bork
May 7 - 31, 2010
Artists talk/demo: Sunday, May 16, 3 - 4pm
Artists Reception: Sunday, May 16, 4 - 6pm
Felicia van Bork received her MFA in 2009 from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design's low residency program at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown MA. The monoprints shown are pieces she created in January,2010, in The Print Studio at 311.
Kristianne Ripple graduated from Alfred University with a BFA in Printmaking and Graphic Design. Since then she has been a printmaking presence in Raleigh. She has a studio at 311 West Martin Street where she combines everything from woodcuts to lithography to create her prints.
April at 311
Through the month of April view Flatlands, Landscapes by Anthony Ulinski and Wood Works, the wood artistry of Bill Wallace.
Real People...Strange Places
The transfixing portraits and transient landscapes of Marianita Stevans.
Opening Reception on Friday, February 5, 6 - 9pm.
311 Gallery
311 West Martin Street
Raleigh, NC 27601
919.821.2262
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm
First Fridays 6 - 9pm
Opening Reception on Friday, February 5, 6 - 9pm.
311 Gallery
311 West Martin Street
Raleigh, NC 27601
919.821.2262
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm
First Fridays 6 - 9pm
Painters Under Pressure
The Galleries at 311 will show the work of six painters who have been invited to work with The Print Studio to create original prints, most for the very first time. Invited artists are Anthony Ulinski, Diane Fiessel, Shaun Richards, Janelle Howington, Gerry Lynch and Louana Luconi Winner. Opening reception will be held on the First Friday in September.
