CURRENT EXHIBITION:
SYMBOL RUSH
January 15 - February 20, 2010 Opening Reception, Friday, January 15th, 6-8 pm  Newman Popiashvili Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition of six artists whose work all weave fantastical narratives based on their own personal accounts. These artists incorporate autobiographical elements within their work, which ranges from ink drawing, watercolor, collage, photography as well as video and sculpture. The three artists who work in drawing vary in their use of the medium. Lauren Beck's collage watercolors create narratives of desire and forms of escape, but in each tale, the mechanism of escape renders the escape impossible. Alicia Gibson documents aspects of her life through humorous parody and creates colorful watercolors of either books she is reading, the Netflix package of a movie she just viewed or the inside of her lingerie drawer. Sascha Mallon's stark black and white drawings are surreal stories completely filling the paper so the "picture-drawing" reads like a novel. Brooklyn based New Zealand artist Jude Broughan's stitched photo collages trace her fascination with ideas around sustenance and growth, fallibility and imperfection, travel and home and the "native." In these works the hand stitched threads and cords are exposed as if rejecting the perfection of a finished piece and appear as work "in progress." In her new work, Adriana Farmiga pushes the boundaries between sculpture and drawing. Her large-scale drawing of bright turquoise clothespins is rolled and then placed upon the aforementioned clothespins and stands in the gallery. All this forces a reexamination of the object, its drawing, and the resulting shift in context. Again shifting perception in their art, Meredith James's video, Present Time, has the artist along with her sister moving through numerous sets of interiors and facades of buildings. The camera zooms and pans from one scene to another, seamlessly joining together rooms from different houses and with this constant change of the background, the two female protagonists appear to be wearing an already drawn architecture. For further information, please contact the gallery. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11am - 6pm.  ^ Meredith James Present Time, 2009 Digital Video 9 minutes 15 seconds Edition 3  ^ Jude Broughan Native Files (Maungatautari and Rhodamine Curve), 2009 Digital c-print, thread and paper Diptych: 16 x 13 inches and 23 x 18 inches 1/5  ^ Alicia Gibson Puttin' the Fine Back in Fine Art, 2009 Watercolor on paper 22 x 30 inches  ^ Alicia Gibson Hunter MFA Nail Polishing Club, 2009 Watercolor on paper 16 x 22 inches  ^ Adriana Farmiga Clothespins, 2009 Watercolor on paper and clothespins 24 x 12 x 12 inches  ^ Sascha Mallon Landscape 37, 2009 Ink on paper 22 x 27 inches |