Newman Popiashvili Gallery

SYMBOL RUSH

Lauren Beck

Jude Broughan

Adriana Farmiga

Alicia Gibson

Meredith James

Sascha Mallon

January 15 – February 20, 2010

Opening Reception: Friday, January 15th, 6 – 8 pm

Newman Popiashvili Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition of six artists whose work all

weave fantastical narratives based on their own personal accounts. These artists incorporate

autobiographical elements within their work, which ranges from ink drawing, watercolor, collage,

photography as well as video and sculpture.

The three artists who work in drawing vary in their use of the medium. Lauren Beck’s collage

watercolors create narratives of desire and forms of escape, but in each tale, the mechanism of

escape renders the escape impossible. Alicia Gibson documents aspects of her life through humorous

parody and creates colorful watercolors of either books she is reading, the Netflix package of a movie

she just viewed or the inside of her lingerie drawer. Sascha Mallon’s stark black and white drawings are

surreal stories completely filling the paper so the “picture-drawing” reads like a novel.

Brooklyn based New Zealand artist Jude Broughan’s stitched photo collages trace her fascination with

ideas around sustenance and growth, fallibility and imperfection, travel and home and the “native.” In

these works the hand stitched threads and cords are exposed as if rejecting the perfection of a finished

piece and appear as work “in progress.” In her new work, Adriana Farmiga pushes the boundaries

between sculpture and drawing. Her large-scale drawing of bright turquoise clothespins is rolled and

then placed upon the aforementioned clothespins and stands in the gallery. All this forces a

reexamination of the object, its drawing, and the resulting shift in context.

Again shifting perception in their art, Meredith James’s video, Present Time, has the artist along with

her sister moving through numerous sets of interiors and facades of buildings. The camera zooms and

pans from one scene to another, seamlessly joining together rooms from different houses and with this

constant change of the background, the two female protagonists appear to be wearing an already

drawn architecture.

For further information and images please contact the gallery.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11am – 6pm.