Through painting, sculpture, installation and video, Natessa Amin, S.E. Benezra, Sarah Pater and A.J. Rombach invite guests into their circle, a “coven" empowered by ritual practice, chance meetings, and places of convergence. The four have developed personal lexical symbols that reinterpret elements of reality for the willing guest: something on the periphery, a circle on the edge, a tangential reality.
Read more about the exhibition.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
NATESSA AMIN
natessa.com
Amin’s work incorporates symbolism and material practices siphoned from a coalescence of family history and African, South Asian, and Pennsylvania Dutch visual culture, mythology, and folklore. Her paintings and other works function as catalogs of experiences, dreams, events, memories, and desires, spiraling outward and reaching through time. The lived experience referenced in Amin’s work embraces an inherent truthfulness at a time when it is often difficult to tell what is real or fake.
S.E. BENEZRA
sebenezra.com
Benezra paints what she calls "sensations of vibrating light, endless space, and frozen time." Invisible forces influence the laws, carve the landscape and shape the body. The sense of scale oscillates between the micro and macroscopic. Her ceramics perform an interior function: often literally holding cut flowers, and an exterior one, where a meditative consideration of the flowers and the sculpture as vessel is offered through the glazed imagery.
SARAH R. PATER
sarahrpater.com
Pater's work employs ideas and imagery drawn from bored, everyday experiences as an administrative assistant, the third most common occupation for women in America, as a way to frame passive aesthetics that permeate daily life. Banal visual scenarios are imbued with hyper-stillness, incongruous signals for times of day, and disorienting spatial cues. The paintings reveal familiar scenes rendered strange — the quotidian turning otherworldly.
A.J. ROMBACH
ajrombach.com
Rombach places an emphasis on the significance of decision making and bearing witness. Her work deals with transcribing her own photographs into oil paint, sometimes working with the same image multiple times in order to examine notions of branching reality. This exhibition will mark her first shown video work. Her looping video contends with the desire for joy amidst a personal tragedy that feels powerlessly fated.
On view: January 12 - February 10, 2019
Opening reception: Saturday, January 12, 7 - 10 PM
ADDITIONAL PROGRAMMING:
ARTIST TALKS WITH A.J. ROMBACH
Tuesday, February 5, 11 AM + 4:30 PM
Saturday, February 9, 3 PM
A.J. Rombach will be giving an artist talk, tour and open Q&A geared toward teens and open to the general public. A.J. will discuss the show and their trajectory as an artist and curator over the last 8 years.
CLOSING RECEPTION feat. LANI ASUNCION: ‘THEY ARE AS THEY WILL BE…’
Saturday, February 9, 7 - 9 PM
A last chance to catch the show, with a live piece performed by Lani Ascuncion, featuring dying plants, projection, sound, and sculpture. Lani will interact with plants that are on the verge of dying or are dead - the plants that did not make it through the winter or did not receive proper sustenance through domestic care.
With much of the show's work meditating on cycles, reproduction and coming into being, Asuncion's performance with dying material will support and complete this narrative.
Note: Guests are encouraged to bring plants to this program. They can be of any size, and number. The plants will not be interacted with, but will not be harmed or damaged in any way.
PRESS:
Went There: THERE IS NO BAND @ The Distillery Gallery
Boston Hassle | January 18
