Becca Mann
New Work
January 10 – February 14, 2009
Opening Reception Saturday, January 10, 6-8pm

In hauntingly serene paintings and graphite drawings, Becca Mann is inspired by forgotten imagery from Imperial Russia on the brink of revolution. Sourcing a diaristic collection of personal snapshots from the Romanov family albums, and documentary photographs of the remote territories of the Russian Empire, Mann reflects on the coexistence of these two worlds at the irreconcilable instant of complete dissolution. The duality of this interaction permeates throughout the exhibition, illustrating the dialectical relationship between the urban center of the empire and the outer lying provinces, and also creating a sensual, aesthetic tension within the collective body of works. The position of the subjects at the precipice before the historical abyss is rendered also by way of their physical contexts—at the edges of bodies of water, deep in snowy forests, or surrounded by light and mist.

Becca Mann's interest in found photographs elevates the photograph as an object in itself, and simultaneously echoes the Russian court's fascination with the photographic medium that represented modernity at the turn of the century. The photographic moment is prolonged, and seeks to encompass a past human epoch through reference and narrative. In Becca Mann's monumental contemporary paintings and drawings, light and color are manipulated in a beautiful and delicate manner, expressing something fragile, disintegrating, and faded.

Robyn O’Neil
(Project Room)
A World Disrupted
January 10 – February 14, 2009
Opening Reception Saturday, January 10, 6-8pm

Robyn O’Neil’s large-scale graphite drawings depict the insignificance of man and beast at the mercy of nature. Turbulent skies and sublime landscapes, adjoined with apocryphal titles, suggest a wrathful higher power. Two majestic horses stand poised and alert, yet a dark ominous cloud obscures their heads from view. Disconcertingly, the tamed animals pose in profile, appearing completely oblivious to the looming sense of apocalypse or the distant men falling from the sky. O’Neil’s vast and desolate landscapes portray the world as a moralizing stage on which these creatures play. Surrounded by the large-scale, tumultuous landscapes, one feels uneasy and inconsequential.