Exhibitions

ERIN HARMON: AGGREGATE OPTICS OF MAKE-A-DO

The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art / 3715 Central Ave, Art & Communication Bldg. Rooms 230 & 240 January 18, 2019 - March 6, 2019

Erin Harmon

Erin Harmon’s work dwells in the twilight zone between painting and sculpture. Filled with longing for places that do not actually exist, contradictions flourish with invocations of both the animated and the arrested, the joyful and the staid, the high and the low. Material and processes become sites for fantasy, illusion, and the interplay between flat and not-flat. The vibrant work in the exhibition tinkers with scale to produce environments that we can project ourselves into as landscapes, even while confronting their qualities of un-nature.

Borne from Harmon’s previous body of painted paper collages, her new work is influenced by techniques common to theatrical painters, a lineage of shapes and images become a trail of breadcrumbs from one idea to another. These materials are scoured, drawn, painted, cut, and recycled over time, one idea begetting another, endlessly self-generating. Whether it be through ceramic, painted muslin, or projection animation (a collaborative video in which Harmon’s gouache-on-paper cut-outs have been animated by artist and musician Kyle Statham), the finished works encapsulate a romance with materials and processes.

Artist Lecture: February 21, 7 pm, Art and Communication Bldg. Room 310