Ways of Seeing
Jan 8 - Feb 9, 2008
Friday, January 18: Gallery Talk 6pm / Reception 7pm
‹ Jeremy Drummond, Pilgrim/Native Landing (Gooseberry)
Participating Artists: Jeremy Drummond, Tonia Matthews, and Rusty Wallace
Maryland Art Place is pleased to present Ways of Seeing—an exhibition featuring the work of Jeremy Drummond, Tonia Matthews and Rusty Wallace. The exhibition, which is inspired by the preeminent book on visual culture of the same name written by John Berger in 1972, focuses on the concealed ideologies and icons manifested in visual culture.
The artists selected for this exhibition each embody a set of visual images that is unique to their individual work, commenting on topics such as suburban culture, memory, and perception through the use of signs and symbols in a variety of media.
Jeremy Drummond is a Canadian artist based in Richmond who explores North American suburban culture through his three-part installation, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. The premise of the installation is based on the guidelines that dictate the acceptance and rejection of proposed street names in a culturally-diverse and quickly growing region outside of Toronto. This installation serves to comment on the relationships that exist between constructed environments and the people who inhabit them, while further examining the changing landscape of suburbia in North America.
Tonia Matthews is a Baltimore printmaker whose work includes architectural icons reminiscent of growing up in Indiana. The recurring image of the roller coaster throughout her work evokes a sense of joy (and fear) in viewers, similar to the feelings the artist experienced when these structures magically appeared each August with the arrival of the 4-H Fair. The creation of this work was also influenced by a monologue Matthew’s saw several years ago in a play entitled 2.5 Minute Ride in which an anecdotal amusement park experience serves as a poignant symbol for a family’s journey.
Rusty Wallace is a Georgia artist who explores perception through the use of symbolism in his work. The work contained in this exhibition is a sampling of drawings, paintings, video, sculpture and other mixed media that the artist began exploring about five years ago. Although presented as a collection, the work represents “interdependent elements that play off and contextualize one another…whose apparent simplicity is only a matter of vantage point, perspective and focus.” Wallace’s work is influenced by art movements including: Minimalism, Pop Art and Italian Renaissance paintings, as much as it is by nature, semiotics, ontology, amongst other interests.
