H20
Exhibition Dates: November 28 - December 23, 2023
Opening Reception: thursday, November 30, 5PM - 8pm
The Painting Center is pleased to present H20, an exhibition of work by Kiah Celeste, Julia Coash, Susanna Crum, Mary Newton, Valerie Sullivan Fuchs and Guinever Smith. Each artist draws attention to both the beauty and wonder of water in its many forms, as well as to its contamination by pollution and climate change. The work invites the viewer in with the allure of colors, patterns, and abstract forms while also calling attention to the dangers posed to the aquatic world. While the media and approach to the subject varies for each artist, from painting and printmaking to sculpture and digital media, what these artists share is a subtle call to contemplate, respect and consider one’s role as a steward of the environment.
Kiah Celeste is a multi-dimensional artist whose work for the last four years has transcended fitting into one category or medium. Her practice typically consists of a few components, to which Celeste often incorporate a motif to establish a visual cadence of repetition, balance, motion and variation. Using almost exclusively discarded or secondhand items and minimal hardware, she creates something new and fortuitous out of decay.
Julia Coash’s mixed media paintings combine recycled maps, nautical charts, and water media, juxtaposing wet against dry as a means of exploring interconnectedness with strong gestural marks, suggesting both terrestrial and atmospheric rivers, while circular forms allude to both the micro and macroscopic such as: atoms, bubbles, or planetary phenomena.
Past, present, and future collide in Susanna Crum’s multilayered blueprints and sculptural globes, which emphasize print media’s roles in maintaining relationships – and erasures – between people and place.
In Mary Newton’s paintings of oceans, the beguiling use of color, pattern, and light draw the viewer into the work. Yet, present in these enticing aquatic environments are elements caused by pollution and climate change, which threaten these fragile ecosystems.
Valerie Sullivan Fuchs contemplates nature by mirroring its fluidity in digital media, digital painting, video, photography, and installation which emulates its self-sustainable energy by integrating solar power and hydroelectricity into artworks.
Guinever Smith’s depictions of streams, rendered in a painterly manner, are at once representational and expressively abstract, and the rare and fragile beauty of these waterways are contemplated and celebrated in her works.
This exhibition would not have been made possible without the support of a private anonymous foundation. Additionally, This exhibition would not have been made possible without the support of the Kentucky Foundation.
