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Equity Gallery is pleased to present Object Oriented, a group show featuring artists Denise Gale, Anne Russinof, Tony Saunders, and Susan Still Scott. Curated by Anne Russinof, the exhibition was conceived as a visual conversation between four like-minded contemporaries whose artwork play with their expected role, mostly by pushing and subverting in differing ways the often ambiguous and arbitrary boundaries between artwork and objects.
For each artist, the use of materials — paint, gesture, even physical framework — has an expansive role which goes beyond the normal confines of two-dimensional painting. The “subject” of the works within Object Oriented revolves around the art being perceived as “objects" on a primal level. Each work strives to transcend the typical associations of traditional painterly media, such as oil on canvas, while still utilizing them. The featured artists refuse to allow their work to languish in the realm of comfortably picturesque detached "elevation" where most artwork resides. By doing this, they become uneasy hybrids that skirt straightforward classification, precariously teetering between categories.
In this way, as Stephen Maine points out in his essay "Object and Subject," the political anxiety and mounting instability of the present moment are addressed, questioned, challenged through these works —but not, ultimately, resolved. Through resisting aesthetic passivity, there is urgency and turbulence imbued in each painting. The art seems to propel off the wall (in the cases of Susan Still Scott and Tony Saunders) or restlessly threatens to break the boundaries of the canvas itself (Denise Gale, Anne Russinof).
The work in Object Oriented maintains the urgency of artistic practice in the face of cultural crisis but does not take explicit sides, letting the works themselves make their claim to solidarity, camaraderie, and freedom.
Curator :
Denise Gale was born in St.Louis, Missouri. She studied Art at Valley Community College and Cal State Northridge. She later moved to Pasadena and showed regularly at the Newspace Gallery and Janus Gallery. In 1980 Gale moved to New York City and curated a number of shows at the Mokotoff Gallery, Penine Hart Gallery and The Painting Center. She had a one-person show at the Painting Center and three one-person shows at Ille Arts Gallery in Amagansett. Gale resides in Springs, Long Island and the East Village.
Anne Russinof lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Chicago, she is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received an MFA from Pratt Institute. Russinof has been a resident at the Yaddo and Millay Art Colonies, and is a member of American Abstract Artists. Supporting herself as a designer for print and web, she also maintains a blog called Gallery Travels. Her work is available at IdeelArt, 1stdibs, Artsy, WideWalls and VanDeb Editions. Recent shows include Galerie Zurcher during Armory Art Fair Week and ODETTA Gallery.
Tony Saunders is a native New Yorker. He is a practicing visual artist, art historian, musician, and social worker. Collage has long been the focus and method in his art practice, which explores the ways in which we construct meaning and narrative in our daily lives. In both his own work, and that which he does with elders, the importance of “play” and living in the present moment are paramount. His painting and music studios are in Brooklyn, NY.
Susan Still Scott is a graduate of the Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, one year of which was spent focusing on Italian Quattrocento and Early Renaissance Art History in Rome, Italy. She received an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, MA. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States as well as Italy, France and the Netherlands. She lives and works in the Northern Taconic hills in New Lebanon, New York.
Equity Gallery, 245 Broome Street, New York, NY 10002
