Opening Reception with the Artist
First Friday, October 2nd, 6 - 8:30 pm*
In the Vault Room:
"The Society for the Prevention of Unfinished
Needlepoint Presents Mary Smull: Finished Works"
The Bridgette Mayer Gallery is pleased to announce its fourth solo exhibition of painter, Clark Gibson. Anthropocene will be on view from September 29 – October 31, 2009, with an opening reception First Friday, October 2nd, from 6:00 - 8:30 pm. The exhibition will feature many shaped panel paintings which blur the boundaries between sculpture and painting. Also on view in the Vault Room will be a selection of finished needlepoint projects by Mary Smull.
Clark Gibson's most recent paintings reflect the artist's increasing preoccupation with "human engineering and alteration of the natural world." Coined in 2000 by scientist Paul Crutzen, the term "Anthropocene" refers to the current era in which human behavior has had a dramatic and global impact on the natural world. Conical pipe shapes have served as a recurring form in much of the artist's work over the past few years, however Anthropocene represents a new juncture in Gibson's oeuvre: the artist has ventured into the realm of the sculptural. Altering the standard rectilinear frame of traditional painting surfaces, Gibson has created organically modeled panels in order to explore the contrasts between the geological environment and the sharp influence of human intervention, represented by the rigid pipe formations that jut in and across the plane of his compositions. States the artist, "As such, these bio-scapes exist somewhere between painting and three-dimensional work: partly painting and partly a model world. This amalgam mirrors the state of our environment: partly natural, partly something else."
Clark Gibson attended New York University and received his BFA from Parsons School of Design in New York in 1993. The artist lives and works in Philadelphia, where he has been featured in a number of solo and group exhibitions at locations including: Artworks Space: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Abington Art Center, Tierney Communications, Wayne Art Center and Penn State Harrisburg. His work has been featured in New American Paintings: Juried Exhibition-in-Print (2006) as well as "Art of the State" at the State Museum of Pennsylvania (2004, 2006) and Studio Visit, volume two, a Juried Selection of International Visual Artists (2008).
In the Vault Room, artist and educator Mary Smull presents a series of needlepoint projects, which serve as a "metaphor for the work of our lives." Smull collects unfinished needlepoints and intervenes in their composition by completing the projects with only black or white yarn. The artist has founded SPUN: The Society for the Prevention of Unfinished Needlepoint, "a nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating the worldwide phenomenon of unfinished needlepoint." Mary Smull received her BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 2009. She has exhibited locally, as well as in Michigan and Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 2009, Smull was selected as a finalist for the Daimler Financial Services Emerging Artist Award, and was nominated for the 2009 Cranbrook art Museum Purchase Prize.
Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday 10:00 a.m.- 6:00 p.m. & by appointment. For additional information please contact Bridgette Mayer at (p) 215-413-8893 (f) 215-413-2283