My show Voiceatscript will open soon at Rosalux Gallery in NE Minneapolis. Exhibition dates are November 4 through the 26th, 2017 with an opening reception on November 11 from 6-10pm. Melissa Loop will have a concurrent show at the gallery. It's called Follow the Moon and continues her exploration of authenticity, place and spirituality through experiences of other cultures. Follow the Moon is inspired by her recent trips to Central America.
General gallery hours are Saturdays & Sundays from noon to 4pm.
Here is a personal statement for Voiceatscript:
Being speechless and without words to articulate ones thoughts, staying silent instead is seen either as a means of defiance or - more often - as a sign of powerlessness. This is where my work begins – out of a deeply felt sense of speechlessness. May it be because of current events in the world or simply a personal failure that leave me forever reaching for adequate words - in front of the blank canvas I am drawing a literal blank - nothing to comment on, nothing to say, niente, rien, nichts. Maybe this is why I have this insatiable hunger to read, using it as a tactic to acquire new words, be more eloquent and ultimately gain a voice.
All the easier then to reach for readymade texts, quotes and clichés to fill the void to form a starting point for a painting only to loose the text again in the painting process. Covering, rewriting, tracing, scraping, continuously layering one word or phrase over the other, patiently, methodically transforming the text until only a faint glimmer of legibility is left. My goal is to make the language foreign enough so that the directness of comprehension dissolves and meaning needs to be renegotiated. How then do we approach these moments of speechlessness? What is gained if words and paintings are allowed to carry an inherent silence, allowed to leave room for ambiguity and imagination, to not fill in every single gap, but to only offer an outline?
