TuckUnder Projects is very pleased to announce the group exhibition Afternoon Delight, co-curated by
Jehra Patrick and Scott Stulen featuring six artists whose work explores personal memory, domestic space and the fetishized ephemera of suburbia. Afternoon Delight features artwork by Alexa Horochowski, Andy Messerschmidt, Jason Pearson, Neal Perbix, Erika Ritzel, and Kurtis Skaife.
Afternoon Delight opens at TuckUnder Projects, Thursday, September 20, 6-9 pm. The exhibition runs September 20-October 21, 2012, with unstructured hours Wednesday through Sunday, and by appointment. Please email info@tuckunder.org to confirm open hours. TuckUnder Projects is located at 5120 York Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN, USA 55410. For further information visit www.TuckUnder.org.
Afternoon Delight explores the aesthetics of a collective, domestic experience and memories that linger and attach to personal possessions. The six artists included in this exhibition subtly reference the primacy of the site – a white-wall gallery space situated in a Southwest Minneapolis garage – through nostalgic forms and decade-specific tastes.
In this context, homogeneously suburban objects take on a new symbolism: A crocheted brick wall juxtaposed with a drawing on wood paneling suggest the intimate environ of a family rec-room; stacked porn resting on doilies at an estate sale allude to the delicate line between public with private lives; square serial paintings become stand-ins for album art and iconic decoration of tall ships suggests both kitsch and hipster irony.
Much like the melodrama and psychology of browsing personal effects at a garage sale, Afternoon Delight positions the viewer as a tourist, both creating personal association and repulsion through intimate household objects and domestic voyeurism.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
ALEXA HOROCHOWSKI Proxemics plays an important role in Horochowski’s work; it is through human perception and interaction that each piece is completed. Each installation is carefully crafted and situated to accommodate and direct the visitor’s body so as to emphasize visual relationships between the various objects, the exhibition space, and the viewer. Manufactured minimalist forms, photographs, modeled wax, and cast metal sculptures function as props that lend the exhibition space qualities of the natural world. Alexa works and lives in Minneapolis, MN, and has exhibited internationally, including recent solo exhibitions Braga Menendez Gallery, Buenes Aires, Argentina and Burnet Gallery, Le Méridian Chambers Minneapolis.
ANDY MESSERSCHMIDT’s ongoing series of paintings on paper explores how supernatural agencies scar and obliterate an idyllic landscape. Stemming from his fascination with mysticism in various landscapes, Messerschmidt's works incorporate topics and imagery ranging from occultism, auras, axis mundis, crop circles, burning bushes, orb luminosities and prehistoric shaman lairs. Messerschmidt currently lives and works in Ely, Minnesota. He has been represented by Plane-Space Gallery, NY, for seven years and continues exhibit in the United States and abroad, with recent exhibitions in Japan, Germany, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Philadelphia and St. Louis.
JASON PEARSON shares an artistic practice with his identical twin brother using photography and drawing to navigate shared experiences and to create narratives existing between fact and fiction based on their memories, family history, and desires and fantasies from adolescence to adulthood. Jason was born and raised in Minnesota. He holds a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and MFA from Syracuse University. Pearson has exhibited his photography and drawing both nationally and internationally and is the recipient of the Jerome Foundation Travel and Research Grant Djerassi Resident Artists Program Residency, and the Cooper Union School of Art Residency.
NEAL PERBIX’s artwork rests loosely on a personal narrative built from childhood memories. By physically constructing assemblages and creating drawings with power tools and their reliefs, Perbix is able to confront the vagueness of these certain memories and re-insert his presence through labor. Ambiguous physical marks on the surface of recognizable household materials suggesting an actual event or history. Neal Perbix holds a BFA from the University of Minnesota and works and lives in Minneapolis, MN.
ERICA RITZEL work deals with the objects that people leave behind and the personalities that arise when these random objects are placed together. In her Home Series, she focuses on domestic interiors; the spaces she believes have the most emotional resonance. This body of work looks at environments void of human life with residues of presence, which retains the meaning of their inhabitants and embodies the history of the space. Erika grew up in Carbondale, Illinois and now lives in Minneapolis. She received her BFA from Webster University in St. Louis and her MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
KURTIS SKAIFE’s work distorts the sense of comfort and nostalgia associated with craft and homemaking. His crocheted series ‘Soft Power’ confronts gender stereotypes directly, reimaging weaponry and fortification in the visual tradition of tea cozies and grandmother’s afghan blanket. He received his BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and is currently living in Iowa City, IA.
CURATOR BIOGRAPHIES
JEHRA PATRICK is a visual artist, curator, arts administrator and programmer working and living out of Minneapolis, MN. As a visual artist, she explores institutional and art-historical narratives through painting and photography. Jehra is a 2011 recipient of the Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists. She has had recent solo and group exhibitions at Soo Visual Arts Center in Minneapolis and the Rochester Art Center in Rochester, MN. In addition to her work as an artist, Jehra is Project Coordinator for mnartists.org, where she supports Minnesota’s art community through on-line resources and offline programs, including Community Supported Art (CSA) with Springboard for the Arts, After School Specials with Soo Visual Art Center, the McKnight Artist Fellowships for Photographers, and programming in collaboration with the Walker Art Center, including Drawing Club and mnartists.marketplace
SCOTT STULEN is the Project Director of mnartists.org at the Walker Art Center, Director of the McKnight Artist Fellowship for Photographers, former Associate Curator at the Rochester Art Center (MN), an exhibiting visual artist, independent curator, writer and DJ. He received his BFA in Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in 1998 and his MFA in Painting and Drawing with a minor in Art History from the University of Minnesota in 2004.Through his work at mnaritsts.org he has developed innovative on and off-line programming including Community Supported Art (CSA) project in partnership with Springboard for the Arts, mnartists.marketplace, Drawing Club, the Internet Cat Video Festival and is a co-curator of the Open Field program. Scott is the co-founder of the SELLOUT gallery, Catalog Projects and served on the board of The Soap Factory.
TuckUnder Projects is a temporary, independent artist exhibition space and sculpture site located within the Fulton neighborhood of Southwest Minneapolis. As an alternative, hybridic home-based contemporary gallery, TuckUnder Projects specializes in unrecognized emerging artists and curatorial collaborators, tactical institutional critique, participatory initiatives and conceptual curatorial projects. Artistic quality at TuckUnder is based upon artist’s tactical aesthetics, participatory exchange, home economics, and conceptual fortitude rather than traditionally conservative art fair and gallery criteria.
For its first season of interior and exterior art exhibit programming, TuckUnder plans six platform exhibits that engage the local community with under recognized local and regional emerging artists and curators working in visual arts, video, site specific sculpture and installation from May thru November 2012. Artists will collaborate with the unique 1950’s architectural environs, TuckUnder garage, fake butterflies and woodpecker, raspberry patch, and scenic overlook. Recent and forthcoming exhibition and curatorial projects include the artists Lisa Bergh & Andrew Nordin/ Rural Aesthetic Initiative, Scott Stulen, Jehra Patrick, Karen Kasel, Pamela & Frank Gaard, Ann George, and Raspberry Patch Resident Sarah Wolbert.
TuckUnder Projects is created with the generous help of MRAC, Springboard for the Arts Incubator program, Arvesen Co., Driessen Water, Mayan Co., and many individuals. TuckUnder Projects activity is funded, in part, by a Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Community Arts Grant, and by appropriations from the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the State's general fund, and its arts and cultural heritage fund that was created by a vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.
Image: Afternoon Delight, Scott Stulen & Jehra Patrick © 2012/Source Photo. For further information please contact Pete Driessen at 612-719-7377 or info@tuckunder.org.
