Disturbing Reality
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DateMar 19 - June 6, 2010
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VenueWeston Art Gallery
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Exhibition Sponsor(s):
Tom Schiff
Exhibition Details
The Cincinnati Arts Association’s Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts presents Disturbing Reality, a group exhibition of nine artists who explore quirky and disquieting images, psychological dramas and off-kilter environments. Participating artists include Allison Grant (Chicago, Ill.); Allyson Klutenkamper (Portsmouth, Ohio); Nate Larson (Baltimore, Md.); Nicholas Sistler (Chicago, Ill.); Mark Slankard (Cleveland, Ohio) and Cincinnati artists Christopher Hoeting, Guennadi Maslov, Emily Hanako Momohara and David Rosenthal. The exhibition is staged on both levels of the Weston Art Gallery and features photography, painting and video projection.
Allison Grant’s Image as Place series creates fictional situations with staged and strangely lit settings that echo feelings of apprehension and hope. Grant’s exterior settings, which are often under construction or in some form of deterioration, serve as the backdrop for a solo figure that is sometimes in an anxious period of transition, much like the site they inhabit.
download Allison's Statement Panel
Christopher Hoeting’s large-scale mixed media paintings are mixtures of social commentary and personal narrative. Photographic images taken at a family graveside service are entombed beneath multiple layers of cracking acrylic resin, suggesting a visual dialogue between death and the ritual of a funeral.
download Christopher's Statement Panel
Allyson Klutenkamper’s Domicile and Circumstances series use domestic interiors to explore the photograph as a visual metaphor for the psyche. Her large-scale photographs of interiors with an anonymous female figure suggest film stills and create an ambiguous narrative and subverted reality.
download Allyson's Statement Panel
Nate Larson’s humorous investigation of Kirlian photography employs everyday food items such as salami, Spam, or a Twinkie, and shoots high voltage electricity through them in a hand-built imaging device which records multi-colored emanations on light-sensitive paper, thus elevating these mundane subjects to an ethereal state.
download Nate's Statement Panel
Guennadi Maslov straddles two worlds with his photographic subjects—his current home in Cincinnati and his former in the Soviet Ukraine where he was born and raised. His haunting portraits of individuals from both spheres of his life attempt to catch the fluid material of the subconscious, reconcile the eastern and western halves of his brain, and illustrate the fragile dualities of human nature.
download Guennadi's Statement Panel
Emily Hanako Momohara’s Koden series (“koden” is the Japanese tradition of gift giving to bereaving families) contemplates bereavement and legacy. Through the use of tableaus and funeral home settings, she creates self-portraits that represent haunting aspects of family members who have passed on.
download Emily's Statement Panel
David Rosenthal’s most recent photographs are inspired by his investigations into 19th-century Spiritualists who projected images onto smoke to create the illusion of a visit of a loved one from beyond the grave in a phenomena that came to be known as phantasmagoria. Through the manipulation of light, time, and film, Rosenthal captures his own “spirits” in a beautifully ghost-like series of photographs taken at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
download David's Statement Panel
Nicholas Sistler’s immaculately constructed diminutive paintings distort scale and perspective, placing the viewer in the position of voyeur bearing witness to an unfolding dark drama that creates a physical and psychological tension.
download Nicholas's Statement Panel
Mark Slankard’s darkly humorous series Minor Invasions, featuring light boxes depicting overtly-fabricated dollhouse interiors, suggests disturbing psychological themes that evoke the sublimated fears and desires that disrupt domestic tranquility.
download Mark's Statement Panel
Gallery Talk Series: Sat., March 20, 2 p.m.
Families Create! Education Workshop: Sat., April 17 with Chris Hoeting, 10 a.m.; Sat., May 22 with Emily Momohara, 10 a.m.
Grant, Allison - Walking Uphill (Image as Place series), 2004, archival pigment print, 20 x 25 inches
Hoeting, Chris - (l-r) St. Peter's Cemetery, Funeral IV, Funeral II with Klutenkamper's Ribbons, Traps
Klutenkamper, Allyson - Clippings (Domicile series), 2005-07, archival pigment print, 44 x 64 inches
Klutenkamper, Allyson - Matchsticks (Domicile series), 2005-07, archival pigment print, 44 x 64 inches
Rosenthal - from Before and After Difference (detail), ink-jet prints, Involuntary Amorphology, video
osenthal - from Before and After Difference (detail), ink-jet prints, Involuntary Amorphology, video
Rosenthal - from Before and After Difference (detail), ink-jet prints, Involuntary Amorphology, video
Rosenthal, David - installation view (detail) from the series Before and After Difference, ink-jet prints
Rosenthal, David - installation view of Involuntary Amorphology (detail 1), 2-channel video installation
Rosenthal, David - installation view of Involuntary Amorphology (detail 2), 2-channel video installation
Slankard, Mark - Minor Invasions (Baby Room with Teeth), 2005, archival pigment print on lightbox, 12x18 in.
Slankard, Mark - Minor Invasions (Bathroom with Twin Pop), 2005, archival pigment print on lightbox, 12x18 in.
Slankard, Mark - Minor Invasions (Bedroom with Belt), 2005, archival pigment print on lightbox, 12x18 in.
Slankard, Mark - Minor Invasions (Bedroom with Leaves), 2008, archival pigment print on lightbox, 12x18 in.
Slankard, Mark - Minor Invasions (Bedroom with Rocks), 2005, archival pigment print on lightbox, 12x18 in.
Slankard, Mark - Minor Invasions (Kitchen Window), 2008, archival pigment print on lightbox, 12x18 in.
Slankard, Mark - Minor Invasions (Kitchen with Thrown Chair), 2005, archival pigment print on lightbox, 12x18 in.
