SUBjected

Drawing • Photography • Print • Sculpture

Jim Brown • Franklin Evans • Elizabeth Stephens
Liss Platt • Lisa Studier • Eileen Olivieri Torpey • Alicia Wargo
curated by Hilary Lorenz

September 17 to Sunday Oct 17, 2004

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 18, 6 to 8 pm

Repetitive drawings, meticulous photographic arrangements, printed grid patterns, multiple bronze castings, and miniscule installations reveal the fascinations of the seven artists featured in the SUBjected show. Guest curator Hilary Lorenz has chosen artists from the east and west coast, as well as Canada. Although each is radically different, they all share a fluency and a deep-seated jones for obsessive mark and object making.

Jim Brown’s photographs of seascapes are multiple takes that focus on the repetition of waves during the evening hours, as the sun sets. They are intended to represent more than a captured moment, but rather to evoke personal nostalgia and the memories we all share.

Franklin Evans’s work is located in unlocatable places, between near and far, painting and drawing, narrative and nonnarrative representation. Shifts in space are both lyrical and abrupt, the results of his search for the unexpected across the intersections of incongruous worlds which overlap, extend, invert, and encompass one another.

Lisa Studier’s woodcut print portraits of marine life focus on the character and personality of the creatures, to celebrate their beauty and draw attention to the increasing threats posed by overfishing, global climate change, pollution, and habitat destruction.

Elizabeth Stephens’ Porn Star / Academic Panty Collection is a series of bronzes juxtaposing academic and porn star panties. This work is both homage and a wink to the bravery and chutzpah of porn stars and intellectually adventurous academics who are physically and intellectually stimulating, be it in the classroom or on the silver screen.

Liss Platt’s digital photographs are highly patterned and structured compositions of candy associated with her childhood, which express her desire to seek comfort by gravitating toward structure (routine, pattern, familiarity, balance) and sweets.

Contemplative and rhythmic, Eileen Olivieri Torpey’s drawings suggest broad landscapes of extraction and ruins, as well as intricate biomorphic patterns. Repeated marks traverse horizontally across the paper, a single mark belonging to the history of the landscape.

Alicia Wargo is interested in the physical manifestation of synthetic and natural reproduction. The accumulation of these occurrences result in a repetitive process for her work. Mold growth, subway maps, urban sprawl, and cell patterns inform the visual structure of her drawings and installations.

Guest curator Hilary Lorenz is a visual artist who has shown nationally and internationally. She is a Professor at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus, a Fulbright Scholar, and recipient of many grants and awards.