Far x Wide is pleased to present BEER, SODA, CIGARETTES, LAMPSHADES, featuring works by Stephen Eakin, Paul Gagner, Heather Garland, Karen Lederer, Polly Shindler, Jennifer Sullivan, Jess Willa Wheaton, and Heeseop Yoon. The title for this selection came from a sign that offers “Beer, Soda, Cigarettes, and Lampshades” to travelers along Long Island’s Sunrise Highway. Inspired by the sign’s simple but cryptic message, the March selection includes artworks that contain similarly poetic juxtapositions. Many of the works feature objects that inhabit or are inhabited by our interior spaces.
Polly Shindler paints domestic interiors that are simultaneously modest and generous. The objects, lush colors, patterns, and paint application provide clues into the psychological state of a figure that is elsewhere. Using a range of media and art historical references, Karen Lederer’s intimate still lifes also contend with issues of power and patriarchy. Paul Gagner’s paintings of toast and books pit humor against the feelings of urgency and doubt that often come with being an artist in the world. The moments of flatness in Hilary Pecis’ work open up to offer meditations on the cherished and overlooked objects that pass through our lives, as well as our psychic investment in them. Pecis’ Untitled features crumpled lottery tickets and receipts on top of a quilt, an image that alludes to tensions between domestic and capitalist labor. Drawing from a diverse artistic practice that includes stand up comedy, Jennifer Sullivan’s paintings and works on paper depict domestic spaces populated with night salads, self-help books, and her cat Queenie. Initially the interiors feel personal and private but when looking deeply they reveal collective anxieties about wellness and isolation, which Sullivan treats with humor and compassion.
Stephen Eakin uses found objects and fabricated hanging structures to explore our attached value to things. Through a rigorous and playful engagement with material, color, and proportion, Eakin questions how objects exist within personal narratives and hierarchies of historical significance. Heeseop Yoon’s detailed works on paper depict objects tangled into each other, sometimes to the point of near collapse. The spaces that contain these objects are defined by their fullness, with layers of memories fused into one another; their finest features almost indistinguishable. Jess Willa Wheaton collages found images into thoughtful constellations that poetically reconfigure form and context. Heather Garland collects objects and transforms them through an intuitive process that examines domesticity and meaning, often revealing the shadow-side of sweetness.
BEER, SODA, CIGARETTES, LAMPSHADES is organized by Jessica Cannon, and marks the fourth presentation from Far x Wide, an ongoing project featuring monthly selections of artworks to benefit social and environmental justice organizations. Works will be available on farbywide.com from 3/1/18 – 4/9/18 and any sales from this grouping will be split 50% to the artist and 50% to PEN America’s Prison Writing Program.
Polly Shindler paints domestic interiors that are simultaneously modest and generous. The objects, lush colors, patterns, and paint application provide clues into the psychological state of a figure that is elsewhere. Using a range of media and art historical references, Karen Lederer’s intimate still lifes also contend with issues of power and patriarchy. Paul Gagner’s paintings of toast and books pit humor against the feelings of urgency and doubt that often come with being an artist in the world. The moments of flatness in Hilary Pecis’ work open up to offer meditations on the cherished and overlooked objects that pass through our lives, as well as our psychic investment in them. Pecis’ Untitled features crumpled lottery tickets and receipts on top of a quilt, an image that alludes to tensions between domestic and capitalist labor. Drawing from a diverse artistic practice that includes stand up comedy, Jennifer Sullivan’s paintings and works on paper depict domestic spaces populated with night salads, self-help books, and her cat Queenie. Initially the interiors feel personal and private but when looking deeply they reveal collective anxieties about wellness and isolation, which Sullivan treats with humor and compassion.
Stephen Eakin uses found objects and fabricated hanging structures to explore our attached value to things. Through a rigorous and playful engagement with material, color, and proportion, Eakin questions how objects exist within personal narratives and hierarchies of historical significance. Heeseop Yoon’s detailed works on paper depict objects tangled into each other, sometimes to the point of near collapse. The spaces that contain these objects are defined by their fullness, with layers of memories fused into one another; their finest features almost indistinguishable. Jess Willa Wheaton collages found images into thoughtful constellations that poetically reconfigure form and context. Heather Garland collects objects and transforms them through an intuitive process that examines domesticity and meaning, often revealing the shadow-side of sweetness.
BEER, SODA, CIGARETTES, LAMPSHADES is organized by Jessica Cannon, and marks the fourth presentation from Far x Wide, an ongoing project featuring monthly selections of artworks to benefit social and environmental justice organizations. Works will be available on farbywide.com from 3/1/18 – 4/9/18 and any sales from this grouping will be split 50% to the artist and 50% to PEN America’s Prison Writing Program.