PAST EXHIBITIONS:

LAUREN BECK, TODD KNOPKE, WYATT NASH, THOMAS RAPAI, MARK WOODS

Wednesday, November 16, 6-8 pm

Days of Miracles and Wonders is a group exhibition with works that create a specific sentiment that is tender and nostalgic, yet ultimately melancholic and lonely. The five artists included in the show work in various media, but whether it is a sculpture, drawing, photograph or painting, the tone of the work is clearly American with a worldview that is always trying to be hopeful, even when the present appears so bleak.

The show takes its name from the title of Todd Knopke’s sculpture relief. The cursive words are carved from basswood and painted in a dreamy nightscape. The simple clichéd phrase at first announces what is good and pure, but of course the repeated mantra only highlights how this is not the current state of affairs.

This phrase sets the stage for Thomas Rapai’s paintings of abandoned corner stores or “party stores” in Detroit parlance. These oils are reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s paintings in their bitter starkness and loneliness. Hopper’s classic Nighthawk shows a late-night diner scene that shows the sterility and despair of urban life. The unique American quality of the 24-hour diners and convenience stores is at its most dismal in Rapai’s paintings – closed-off, boarded-up and emptied-out. They unmistakably carry associations of the Detroit race riots.

Wyatt Nash’s sculptural tableau Another George Jones Night, refers to the Country-Western singer who crones about heartbreak, loss and disappointment. It is a scene that could be from any US suburban home: a wooden back chair sits beside a coffee table that holds a lamp and a phone and on the floor is a tossed-out bouquet of flowers and cigarette butts. The sculpture is fabricated from light materials – foam, paint, papier-mâché and resin – highlighting the conceptual and physical hollowness of the presented still-life.

Dream-like drawings envisioned by Lauren Beck are full of characters and objects in fantasy spaces. In her drawing, The Bog, the artist paints a commune like house where she once lived. The isolation of the figures is apparent in the way they are disconnected from each other and their environment. Mark Woods snaps an empty billboard that hangs on a chain-linked fence over looking Manhattan. The image of a lonely tree in front of the empty billboard is as melancholic and isolated as Beck’s figures.