[WA] emergence gallery
It's All Relative
New works by Austin Brady & Fatima Sow
January 10 – February 22, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday, Jan. 10, 7-10 pm
Coordinating with Gilded our tribute to Gilda Snowden we have two of her current CCS students in our emerging artist gallery.
Students under the same professor, with wonderfully different results of that instruction.
Statement from Austin:
Both secluded and seduced, I engage the experiences, conversations and emotional interactions of life and then anthropomorphize them. I am incarnating abstract feelings and then forcing these characters to deal with their divinity and deformity, to deal with the tension between them, and to reconcile with the reckless physical forms they are given. I appropriate and imagery from spiritualties, ghost stories, mythologies, along with popular (and not so popular) culture, in tandem with intimate and personal contexts to lend themselves to the new deities form.
Paired with these beings, I make "artifacts" that serve as ceremony to these allegorical beasts and beauties: masks, crude tools, instruments, and primitive weapons. I like to think of these objects as segue to reality as many real cultures do in ritual.
I utilize combination of traditional media and experimentation of new media as a method of forming these fables. Although I work in a very large variety of media, I identify myself as a painter the most. I am also interested in wearable/costume art and performance in a video or theater context.
Statement from Fatima:
Through collected memories, photos, stories, and environments I formulate a mapping that explore these spaces and moments in time. These subjects develop works that play on unification and an embracement of contrast to establish a place of belonging and closeness towards my family history. These places fill a void of my unfamiliarity with relationships on my father's side.
I explore the contexts of family portraits and push its traditional parameters. The process of photo manipulation allows me to draw connections with family members I know little of. There are recurring symbols used in my body of work, some whole and others incomplete in shape that reference the link between my father, grandmother and self; as well as the connection between cities that my relatives reside: Detroit, MI, Mbacké, Senegal and Milan, Lombardy in Italy. These symbols also relate to the fragmentary relations between myself and kin.
The use of various types of wood as a prominent surface in my work ties to the context of the family tree and the connections that shape it. The act of assembling and piecing together not only serves as a procedure between the materials I use, but the fusion of family elements I reach out for.
These alignments are then executed through wood assemblage, figurative sculpture, portrait painting and collage.
The exhibition will run from January 10th – February 22nd, 2014 in our emerging artist gallery.
Open gallery hours are Saturdays during exhibitions, noon-3pm & for Art Detroit Now's Third Thursday on Jan. 16th & Feb. 20th.
A division of CAID, Whitdel Arts is an 1800 sq. ft. professional exhibition space that showcases the work of local and international established and emerging artists.
Whitdel Arts is located at 1250 Hubbard Street, Suite B1, Detroit MI 48209.
Whitdel Arts is also located on the web at www.whitdelarts.com