Nashville Area Artists Use Geometric Elements to Express Cultural Perceptions

NASHVILLE, TENN. (July 17, 2013)—Works by eight Nashville-area artists—Alex Blau, Patrick DeGuira, Warren Greene, Ron Lambert, James Perrin, Christopher Roberson, Terry Thacker and Amelia Winger-Bearskin—will be on display in the Frist Center’s Conte Community Arts Gallery from Aug. 30, 2013 through Feb. 2, 2014. The exhibition, entitled Abstractometry, features works that employ geometric patterns, typography or other graphic codes to express cultural factors that shape our lives.

The title of the exhibition reveals two threads of commonality that tie these unique works together. Abstractometry merges the term “abstract”—a synopsis of a larger idea—with the notion of “metrics”—how we measure and are defined by systems ranging from technology and architecture, to language and film.

“By using text, geometric elements or other unexpected images, these artists present work embedded with perceptions of society that are open to interpretation,” explains Frist Center Chief Curator Mark Scala. “They explore various aspects of society through film, music, collages and paintings.”

For example, artist Alex Blau’s precise, geometric paintings reference popular culture, notably Japanese anime and bright product packaging like gum-wrappers. Similarly, Amelia Winger-Bearskin’s Dance Sequence videos have a pop sensibility. Remixed from musicals, cartoons and nature shows from the 1960s and ’70s, the arrangements feature soundtracks adapted from Broadway and pop music.

In most of the works in the series Allegory: Petite Tigers, Terry Thacker printed scenes from news images of a New Jersey roller coaster that had been bent, twisted and flooded by Hurricane Sandy. “The collages of Terry Thacker demonstrate the capacity of art to define not only who we are, but also what we have lost,” says Scala.

In Warren Greene’s paintings, the idea of loss is similarly reinterpreted. Loose atmospheric forms and rigid gridlines are applied, then scraped, sanded and reapplied. “Greene’s use of the grid is in the spirit of 20th-century artists such as Piet Mondrian, Agnes Martin and Carl André, for whom the structure provides a poetic symbol for social progress or cosmic balance,” Scala explains.

According to Mr. Scala, Ron Lambert offers a variation on the theme by identifying the grid as a fundamental aspect of urban existence, and he uses it to question the primacy of human order. In his work Static, gridded squares appear as bits of civilization interspersed between fragments of nature, then disappear from the landscape and reappear elsewhere. The accompanying audio reflects a dynamic and edgy tension between the two worlds.

Patrick DeGuira transforms a simple cause and effect declaration into a semiotic play on ways meanings can shift with different word placements. “DeGuira’s Steals Clock. Faces Time has the composure of a newspaper headline, which we might read thusly: someone steals a clock, is caught and faces jail time. The text has peculiar inner phrases or couplings that might have other, more poetic resonance: ‘clock/faces,’ ‘steals/time,’ also, ‘clock/time,’” says Scala.

James Perrin combines radically different painting techniques within each of his works, while commenting on consumer culture. “Many of his paintings feature sinuous lines and electrifying gestures woven together with images of humanity to suggest the elasticity of time, space and consciousness,” says Scala.

Christopher Roberson, on the other hand, finds metaphorical significance in aspects of entertainment such as sports and cartoons. He translates these cultural forces into simple forms or abstract notions, but leaves them open to interpretation. In both Area and Wettt, Roberson alludes to basketball, while Smile Variations is a fanciful series of arcs transformed into a group of cartoon-like smiles.

About the Artists

Alex Blau
Alex Blau has a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design. She has shown her work internationally, with solo shows at Firecat Projects, Chicago; Gallery Seomi, Seoul; Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica; Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami; Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston and the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain. Blau is the recipient of several awards including a Joan Mitchell M.F.A Grant. Currently, she lives in Nashville and teaches art at Austin Peay State University.

Amelia Wanger-Bearskin
Amelia Winger-Bearskin was on the faculty of Vanderbilt University’s Art Department until she moved to Brooklyn in 2013. She has participated in international performance festivals and biennials in such cities as Beijing, Manila, Seoul, Sao Paulo, New York, and Washington, D.C. In 2013 she was an artist facilitator at The Exchange Cafe at the Museum of Modern Art’s “Artist Experiment” series. She is currently a graduate student at the NYU-TISCH School of the Arts in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).

Terry Thacker
Terry Thacker is a professor of Fine Arts at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film where he was department chair from 2006 to 2011. He has also taught art at Savannah College of Art and Design and Middle Tennessee State University. Thacker received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Austin Peay State University and his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis; Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga; Dulin Gallery, Knoxville; Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville and many university galleries.

Warren Greene
Warren Greene earned the Bachelor of Fine Arts from Freed-Hardeman University and the Master of Fine Arts from the Memphis College of Art. He is represented by Cumberland Gallery in Nashville, Tenn. and David Perry Smith Gallery in Memphis, Tenn. Greene has taught at Freed-Hardeman University, Austin Peay State University and is currently Chair of the Department of Art at Lipscomb University. His work is included in many collections across Tennessee.

Ron Lambert
A graduate of Alfred University in New York State, Ron Lambert has exhibited his work at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Mich., the Attleboro Arts Museum, Mass., the Center of Contemporary Art, Seattle and the Housatonic Museum of Art, Conn. His videos have been screened in the Crosstalk Video Festival in Budapest and the Sanluan Yishu project in Beijing. Lambert’s work is in the collection of the Swedish Medical Center and the Tacoma Art Museum. He is a founding member and president of the COOP collective in Nashville, Tenn.

Patrick DeGuira
Patrick DeGuira has exhibited his work at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville; Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis; Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga; Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art, Nashville as well as numerous commercial, nonprofit and university galleries. He is represented by Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville, Tenn. He has co-curated international video exhibitions through Fugitive Projects. DeGuira is a recipient of a Tennessee Independent Artist Fellowship Grant and multiple Tennessee Professional Development Support Grants.

James Perrin
James Perrin received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting in 1997 from the Kansas City Art Institute and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from Boston University. Perrin’s work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe. He is represented by Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville, Tenn., where he currently lives.

Christopher Roberson
Christopher Roberson received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2004. He spent several years in Chicago where he co-organized exhibitions, festivals and pop-up art spaces in conjunction with Public Media Institute. In 2010, he co-curated Printervention, a print and public art exhibition featuring over seventy artists, which traveled from Chicago to Detroit, Nashville and Denmark. His work has been shown at alternative spaces and galleries nationally, most recently at 40AU locally and Field Projects in New York.

Related Public Programs

Thursday, August 29
Artist’s Forum: with Terry Thacker, Fine Arts, Watkins College of Art and Design, and Warren Greene, Chair of Art at Lipscomb University Painting Abstraction: Music, Poetry, and/or Allegory
6:30 p.m.
Frist Center Auditorium
Free; first come, first seated

Artist’s Forum is a program in which artists discuss the thoughts and processes behind their work. Participants are encouraged to come and be part of the dialogue.

As with any substantial conversation within history, painting attempts to recover from its past useful propositions and jettison failed ones. Please join painters Terry Thacker and Warren Greene for an engaging conversation about how they approach their art with an eye to the past and an appreciation of the present.

Thursday, October 17
Artist’s Forum: with Alex Blau and Patrick DeGuira
6:30 p.m.
Frist Center Rechter Room
Free; first come, first seated

Artist’s Forum is a program in which artists discuss the thoughts and processes behind their work. Participants are encouraged to come and be part of the dialogue.

This month’s Artist’s Forum invites Nashville artists Alex Blau and Patrick Deguira to speak about their involvement in the exhibition Abstractometry, on view in the Frist Center’s Conte Community Arts Gallery. The artists talk about how their work employs geometry and other sign-systems to signify the role of technology, architecture, language, and design in shaping our lives.

Sponsors

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts is supported in part by the Metro Nashville Arts Commission, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

CONTACT:

Buddy Kite: 615.744.3351, ”
Ellen Jones Pryor: 615.243.1311, ”