FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -

ART EXHIBITION: CARRIE WALKER

“THE STORYBOOKS HAVE BEEN UNFAIR”

September 19 - October 24, 2009

Opening Reception: September 19, 7-10 pm

Artist Talk: Sunday, September 20, 2pm

Gallery hours:  Thurs - Sat, 12 - 6pm & by appointment.

For images, please contact: Kristi Engle

kristi@kristienglegallery.com

Kristi Engle Gallery is pleased to present new work by the Canadian artist, Carrie Walker.  The Storybooks have been Unfair features work from an ongoing project that was sparked by Walker’s

thrift store purchase of a sketchbook full of landscapes.  The collection of simple modest drawings struck Walker as an unfinished project and so, in an effort to “complete” them, she proceeded to draw various animal portraits into them.  In further pursuing the project, Walker drew enlargements of just the original landscapes, carefully tracing the efforts of her anonymous and unwitting collaborator, thereby aiding a seamless transition between the found drawings and a second “completion” of them in watercolor.  Nonetheless, Walker’s characteristic treatment of her subjects - a precise and highly skilled rendering in the manner of scientific illustration - adds an eerie element of dissonance between her efforts and those of the found artist.

This project explores artistic notions of ownership, collaboration, appropriation and manipulation.  Walker plays with the liberties and constrictions that the found sketches impose in both composition and the effects of style.  Her animal additions activate the drawings, bringing them to life.  The resulting scenes have become animated by these protagonists who seem to have stepped into them as unto an empty stage.  And yet, by deploying a purposeful implausibility through scale, perspective and color, Walker frustrates the viewer’s picture-perfect view of a natural world.

Walker’s feelings about the incompleteness of the original drawings cannot be reconciled with the unknown artist’s ideas about the landscapes. Walker’s additions, are in effect, one world view’s encroachment upon another. A visual back-and-forth exchange between the two artists -- Walker’s technically skilled “completion” of each work, paired with the unpolished quality of the found drawings -- produces a distinctive mixture of the two different artists’ narratives. The result of this is yet another third, unrealized narrative which paradoxically manifests itself as an “incompleteness,” that requires the viewer to “finish” what has been started.

Kristi Engle Gallery devotes itself primarily to solo exhibitions of new works by contemporary artists. It is located in Highland Park, near the corner of Ave. 50 and York Blvd.