FUEL Presents Far In/Far Out: A group exhibition featuring the work of Mylinh Chau, Garrett Crabb, Garrett Davis and Erica Prince. On view from August 15th – October 24th, 2009.
The spectator has to think in a vocabulary of action: its inception, duration, direction – psychic state, concentration and relaxation of the will, passivity, alert waiting. He [/she] must become a connisseur of the gradations between the automatic, the spontaneous, the evoked. -Harold Rosenberg
- Erica Prince, Mylinh Chau, Garrett Crabb
In viewing the work of these four artists, one becomes immediately aware of the physical and psychological conditions requisite to their mode of creation. Like the practitioners of the Dada and Surrealist movements, Chau, Crabb, Davis and Prince are also seemingly aware of these conditions and their potential as paths to illumination. Although each artist is uniquely defined through their own medium; collage, as a practice, seems to play an integral role in the development of these otherworldly and absurdist works.
The show brings together a selection of drawings from animator Garrett Davis whose critically acclaimed work [Story From North America] is, “a combination of surprisingly poignant song-driven storytelling and some of the most crazily inventive and funny hand drawn animation”. (Quoted from Amid of Cartoon Brew). Davis’ primary influence draws from his study of the long survey of western philosophy and oftentimes implies moral questioning. Although there is an absurd and funny dimension underlying Davis’ drawings, for example in the interactive collage of a moveable nun superimposed on another face in which you can change the expression, there is something about the work that leaves one feeling a bit unsettled.
Expounding on animist philosophy, proverbs and her own personal narrative, Mylinh Chau’s drawings envision alternate civilizations, inhabited by mythical creatures, humanoids, and macabre artifacts. Man/woman’s connection with the natural world is a dominant theme throughout most of her work, a factor that is likely inspired by her recent year-long visit to the Northern mountainous regions and coastal villages of Vietnam. Using ink and watercolor as her primary medium, these folkloric drawings seem mysteriously poised in an undefined pictorial space.
Submitting to chance and a willful misunderstanding of documentary-based source material (dated National Geographic Magazines and text book illustrations), Garrett Crabb presents collaged landscapes that are both humorous and disturbing in their unlocatable familiarity. In White Flag, for example, the background image featuring an atmospheric forest, is altered only by a single collaged addition, an ambiguous white form resembling a flag, floating ghost-like in the center. Although seemingly effortless in their application, these mysterious images are a labored balance of artistic imagination with concrete fact.
By projecting furniture, “art”, clutter and décor into her drawn interiors, Erica Prince creates environments of indulgence and frivolity. Lowbrow art and design merge to the effect of cinematic space, unpeopled yet distinctly evocative of the characters that might inhabit them. As the artists puts it in her own words: “I urge the viewer to make themselves at home. Become the missing character. Feel the silk upholstery, meditate, host a cocktail party, and entertain a lover. Try the spaces on like trying on a bad outfit. You know it is too flamboyant, but you have a sick curiosity of how it might look.”
Artists Reception will be held on Friday September 4th – first Friday – from 6-9 pm.
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