Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to present Rough and Ready, an exhibition curated by Fran Shalom with work by Sophie Friedman-Pappas, Rachel Klinghoffer, Cyrilla Mozenter, Helen O’Leary, and Cordy Ryman. The show accompanies Fran’s solo show, Groping for the Elephant, and will be up from September 16th to October 23rd. Fran has written about the concept behind the exhibition and about each artist below.
Rough and Ready:
I brought these five particular artists together because of the unique way they appropriate ordinary everyday materials and transform them into something visually surprising, emotionally fulfilling and ultimately, happily ambiguous.
Each artist has a specific intention that does not necessarily intersect with another, but in this show I am less interested in a thematic “why” but rather the “what” or the “how” they create the work. The process and outcome of each artist is singular and contemporary. The work is about painting, color, shape, texture, object, the world we live in, language, history, memories and the joy of making.
These artists construct, pull apart and put back together, re-imagining, un-doing and re-contextualizing materials that we see and use in our everyday lives and make us see them again in a fresh and distinctive way. I appreciate that shift in perspective.
-Fran Shalom