Mahan Gallery is pleased to present “Keep Calm”, an exhibition featuring new works by Marlous Borm, Diane Carr, Emily Katz and Caris Reid.
“Keep Calm” is an exploration of memory and a metaphorical embrace of innocence. Before corruption and life experience had infringed on our childlike simplicity, we could marvel in our honest practices. So often do we disregard the importance of how our exposures from early age help mold and imprint who we are to become. This exhibition is an investigation of the artists interpretation of memory and innocence. By viewing the selected works for “Keep Calm” one can delve into the structure of the individual artists’ own recollections. Proceeding, you will then experience the artists communal essence.
Dutch artist, Marlous works with paint as a starting point. At ground zero she redefines beauty with basic actions like stripping down the act of painting and placing it in a space. The frame, canvas and other materials are being used to evoke a minimalist language. She is also comparing architectural space and the subjective space of painting by means of understatement and abstraction.Marlous lives and works in New York and The Netherlands. She studied at Cooper Union in New York and graduated from Amsterdam’ s Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Graphic Design. She is currently enrolled in the MFA Painting program at Bard College Upstate New York.
Diane Carr paints fictitious environments that explore surroundings of natural and imagined spaces. The paintings reference icy landscapes, isolated seascapes, and dense forests. Through heightened color and shifts in scale, Carr emphasizes the material of paint. Similarly, in relying on gesture and alternating thin washes with layered areas, she creates spaces within the environments that dissolve into abstraction. The paintings challenge the boundary between fantasy and the real realms to the shrinking natural world. Artist Diane Carr lives and works in New York. She received her BA from American University and MFA from The School of Visual Arts. She has exhibited her work nationally and has received numerous awards and grants.
Emily Katz, who is fueled creatively by her closeness to nature and sensitivity to beauty in all things, can’t remember a time when art wasn’t apart of her life. Working predominantly with thread, cotton muslin and polyester netting, each image is made by Katz on her sewing machine with no preplanning, or sketches. The embroidered pieces for “Stay Calm” are images of women sleeping inside of crystals. They are cradled by the healing and calming energy of each geode. The layering of the netting creates a visual space reminiscent of a womb or cocoon. Emily lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She studied at the Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art before returning to back to Portland. Along with making art, Katz has co-founded the clothing line, Bonnie Hearts Clyde. She also sings and plays autoharp in the band Love Menu. She exhibits her work in solo and group shows across the country.
Caris Reid is drawn to things unspoken and intangible in her moody and sometime melancholy paintings. The outside and inside become blurred, and fantasy blends with reality. Her paintings attempts to give color or substance to something that otherwise can’t be seen but only felt, like tension in a room. Desire and longing are nurtured by the sense that it is impossible to make something linger for longer that it will. Caris lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated Cum laude from Boston University. In addition to exhibiting her work nationally, Reid writes for the Dossier Journal.
Curator(s)
