From press release:
V1 Gallery is pleased to present
Interior Dialogues
Kent Iwemyr, Ryan Schneider, Eddie Martinez, Søren Behncke, John Copeland, Monica Kim Garza, Loji Höskuldsson, Mischa Pavlovski Andresen, Todd James, David Risley, James Ulmer, Devin Troy Strother, JJ Manford, Shannon Peel, Marcus Leslie Singleton, HuskMitNavn, Vilhelm Lundstrøm & Misaki Kawai
OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY AUGUST 19. 2022. TIME: 16:00 – 21:00
EXHIBITION PERIOD: AUGUST 20 – SEPTEMBER 17. 2022
“I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.”
- Henri Matisse
”To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.”
- Philip Guston
The four walls of a home, the fleeting smoke from a lit cigarette in hand, a quiet reading session in the living room, mysterious totem tabletop tableaus, wildflowers in a rustic pitcher, cozy bedrooms, a decked-out lunch table, kitchens, bathrooms, hotel lobbies, and street fronts; Interior Dialogues unites eighteen artists, presenting modern incarnations and reinterpretations of the classical interior painting. Traditional divisions between portraiture and still life are suspended as well as hierarchies in subject-matter. In a sweeping stream of consciousness, we are led on a journey through nature and culture, the domestic and the public, through rich worlds populated with characters, objects and animals, and the places, spaces and events of our nomadic and ever-changing lives.
In Vilhelm Lundstrøm’s iconic work, human figures and objects are treated with the same geometric restraint, while Monica Kim Garza’s monumental yet intimate portraits are always seemingly on the edge of dissolving into abstraction. James Ulmer’s stylized psycho-drama straddles the line between the immediacy of a road-sign and the enigma of the subconscious, juxtaposed to Eddie Martinez’s radiant and gestural compositions and JJ Manford’s meticulous renderings of empty bedchambers full of nostalgia. Todd James’ bright rooms seem to superimpose different angles of perception into one, defying the physical laws, and Loji Höskuldsson’s delicately embroidered memento mori speak to the passing of time, and of inevitable change. Misaki Kawai and HuskMitNavn enlist humor and naivety to express the complexity of the trivial, and the surreal and folksy chamber plays of Kent Iwemyr denaturalize the mundane spaces we take for given.
Science seeks to describe the world as it is, and language can communicate the inner thoughts of the subject. But unlike the physicist or geographer, who is beholden to objective reality, visual artists reinterpret and remake reality with- and within the artwork. They encourage us to observe the world around us, but also to see past it. Like Matisse’ interiors, which are always more than what they seem, and Guston, who paints his own presence into the objects he depicts, reality may be the object of study but never the final destination. Rather, the potential of these works seem to arise from the inherent contradiction that they reveal about art: the moment we define its meaning, it also escapes us, continuously generating new associations and experiences.
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