26 Oct 2007 to 12 Jan 2008
11am - 4pm Tuesday through Saturday
Opening Reception: October 26, 2007 6pm – 9pm
Ellen Curlee Gallery
1308A Washington Ave.
63103
St Louis, MO
St. Louis Missouri
Missouri
North America
p: 011 314 241-1299
m:
f:
w: www.ellencurleegallery.com
Mickey Smith Collocation No. 4 9 (today) 2007 Fifty 24 x 16 panels, digital pigment prints
WELLBOUND DEAN KESSMANN and MICKEY SMITH October 26 - December 8, 2007
At a time when information is increasingly being viewed in digital format, Mickey Smith and Dean Kessmann have chosen to explore the physicality of the printed word.
Rolling magazines into cylindrical shapes and photographing the colorful patterns formed by the overlapping edges of their pages, Dean Kessmann reduces them to thin streams of color that appear as non representational compositions. The artist conceived the installation as a study in variations among like structures. For this installation, he adopts a horizontal format, which is, for him, both reminiscent of the American landscape and of digital code. Because the magazines he photographs are art magazines, and art is reproduced in these magazines, Kessmann refers to his work as "appropriations of appropriations of reproductions". Arranging the prints in rows that wrap around the gallery wall, the artist varies the scale of his prints to create the appearance of faster and slower flowing passages of digital data, prompting the reflection of digital technology on printed materials as well as the originality of appropriation in art.
Mickey Smith photographs bound periodicals and professional journals on the shelves of public libraries. The artist seeks to document these reservoirs of information before they disappear in cyberspace. The images are not staged, and she does not manipulate their placement on the shelves. While they are minimalist repetitions of a single form, the titles on the colorful spines prompt us to define our relationship to the meaning of their titles. Smith works in series of diptychs, triptychs and installations that she calls "collocations". Collocation # 4 is a mural scale work comprising fifty images of gray and yellow journals entitled "Today" and "Tomorrow" installed unframed, in a grid format. Viewing Smith's individual images and installations, we are Lilliputians, looking at giant books--Alice in Wonderland, lost among the stacks.
Mickey Smith was born in 1972 in Duluth, Minnesota and received a B.A. in Photography from Moorhead State University in 1994. Images from her Volume series have shown in galleries and museums throughout the United States and are included in the collections of the Weisman Art Museum and Fidelity Corporate Art Collection. Smith is the current recipient of the McKnight Artist Fellowship for Photography and a Forecast Public Art Affairs grant.
Dean Kessmann is an Assistant Professor of Photography at The George Washington University in Washington D.C. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, The Liberator, and The Washington Post. His most recent exhibitions include one-person shows at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and Conner Contemporary Art in Washington D.C.
next door: Video Series Jennifer Wilkey October 26 – November 15, 2007
Ellen Curlee Gallery is pleased to announce its fifth video in its next-door video series with a work by St. Louis native, Jennifer Wilkey. In her piece, Procedure 2, Wilkey considers what it means to be ill and examine the roles of the patient, the doctor, and the hospital in treatment and healing. Ideas of healing, repair, and the body's response are central to her work. The amount of time spent in search of diagnosis and in the hospital are reflected in her processes. The video series is an exploration into the mental state of illness and how a patient functions both in the physical body and in the mind. In both, unusual narratives that walk a space between reality and the surreal, are created by transferring imagery and themes into settings not associated with the medical. Objects and materials collected from the hospital become crafted memorials of the experience, and through this, are humanized. Time plays an important role within the concepts of Wilkey’s work as it becomes the element that exists in a slow motion: monotony, repetition, and duration of her craft explore the longevity of illness and the feeling of sameness associated with being in the hospital.
Viewed from the street through the window next door to the gallery space, this series showcases video work by local, national and international artists 24 hours a day. The videos will change every two weeks. By showing video art in such a public manner, the gallery aims to heighten public interest in video work and hopes to instigate a dialogue about the individual works as well as the medium in general.
Jennifer Wilkey is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. In 2005, she earned her BFA at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Illinois. Bachelor of Science in Anthropology. Her selected exhibitions include: Spark Video: Spark Galley, Syracuse, New York, 2007; Video Art Now: Everson Museum, Syracuse University, 2007; Transmedia Studies MFA Student Exhibition, Lightwork, Syracuse, New York, 2007; Great Lakes Emerging Artist Competition, Art Forum, Adams Art Gallery, Dunkirk, New York, 2007; Converge II, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, 2007; Flat Files, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Missouri, 2006; Local Artists Exhibition, Fresco Gallery, Edwardsville, Illinois, 2005; Photography Exhibition, The Gallery, Edwardsville, Illinois, 2004; Digital and Photographic Imagers, The Red Spoon, Alton, Illinois, 2003; First Annual Print Council Exhibition, Fort Gondo, St. Louis, Missouri, 2003; Digital and Photographic Imagers, Art and Design Building Atrium, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Illinois, 2002.
