Mrs. Benway at Fourteen30 Contemporary

Artists: Wynne Greenwood, Lara Kim, Jenine Marsh, Anna Sew Hoy, Emily Mae Smith

Exhibition title: Mrs. Benway

Venue: Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, US

Date: September 18 – November 1, 2015

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland

Fourteen30 Contemporary is pleased to present the group exhibition Mrs. Benway, with work by Wynne Greenwood, Lara Kim, Jenine Marsh, Anna Sew Hoy, and Emily Mae Smith. The exhibition will be held September 19 – November 1, 2015, and an Opening Reception held on Friday, September 25th, 6 to 8pm.

Titled after Jutta Koether’s column in the formerly Cologne-based periodical Spex, Mrs. Benway is a glimpse into the contemporary form of identity and arts creation – perhaps better thought of as a freedom of form, both in style and politics. Koether’s column, published 1985-1990, continuing the hybridity common within the Cologne art scene at that time, drew from a motley body of influences, ranging from daily observations, fine arts, film and literature. Similarly, the artists presented in Mrs. Benway produce work with an understanding of the multitude of artistic, female, and queered modes of existence.

The objects, videos and photographs of Wynne Greenwood embody the complexities of contemporary queerness, blurring the distinctions between classicism and punk, universal and personal. Greenwood addresses both the internal conditions of emotional identification, along with an outward perception of the body’s politics.

Lara Kim’s sculptural works inhabit and explore the liminal space existing between binaries of identity. Frequently made of perishable foodstuffs from Asian markets alongside items sourced from her home and body, her work transverses definitions of found-sculpture and material manipulation. Both Kim and Greenwood mirror the composite and bifurcated identifications contained within their own multiracial and queer womanhood, resulting in works that allegorize the body and life of a subject rebelling against sociocultural norms.

The work of Emily Mae Smith feeds off the pop-sensibility of appropriation and simplification through cartoon, and develops it into a playful and incisive mode of critique towards art history and art viewership. Her use of art nouveau-style alongside anthropomorphized objects humorously point to the minimal requirements of bodily identification; requiring little more than the suggestion of limbs and a humanized posture to present cartoonish but recognizably human roles.

Jenine Marsh’s approach to sculpture implicates the surface of her works as the site of inquisition, disfigurement and liberation. Considering the sculptural surface as analogous to the surface of the body, skin, Marsh’s works play with the notions of identity through materiality. In her manipulation of the variety of materials used, her works empathetically react to the artist’s hand that forms them. Similarly, Anna Sew Hoy’s creation of organic forms results in sculptures that appear birthed of natural evolution and growth in their weathered, lived quality. Ranging in complexity and shape, each of her works conveys their own living form through qualities of surface and material.

Drawing from a variety of media, Mrs. Benway presents the wholeness that results from the constituent potentials of womanhood — embodied through artists, mothers, performers, writers and musicians.

Wynne Greenwood is a multimedia artist living and working out of Seattle, WA whose solo exhibitions include Cooley Gallery, Reed College, Portland (2014), Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2014), and Soloway, Brooklyn, NY (2013). Recent group exhibitions include Parallel Processes, Jacob Lawrence Gallery (Seattle, 2013); Reflections without Sun, South London Gallery (London, 2013); and [Mw] Moment Magnitude, Frye Art Museum (Seattle, 2012). Her solo exhibition Kelly will be presented at the New Museum, New York, in the fall of 2015.

Anna Sew Hoy received her MFA in 2008 from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. Sew Hoy’s work has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Aspen Art Museum; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA); the Asia Society, New York; the Orange County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD); Salon 94, New York; and Greater LA, New York. She has held solo exhibitions at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles; LAXART, Los Angeles; Sikkema, Jenkins & Co., New York; Renwick Gallery, New York; and the San Jose Museum of Art. Sew Hoy has been reviewed on numerous occasions by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Artforum. Sew Hoy is represented by Various Small Fires, Los Angeles.

Lara Kim is an artist living and working out of Eugene, OR. Her work has been featured in multiple exhibitions at the University of Oregon, including IF-THEN-ELSE (LaVerne Krause Gallery, 2015); and a solo exhibition Personal Identity (Washburn Gallery, 2015). She is currently a participant in the Portland-based artist incubator Prequel, and received her BFA from the University of Oregon.

Jenine Marsh is a sculptor, living and working out of Toronto, whose recent solo exhibitions include 8-11 (Toronto, 2015), Jr. Projects (Toronto, 2014), and Xpace Cultural Centre (Toronto, 2013). Her work has been included in recent group shows such as There is no There, Hamilton Artists Inc. (Hamilton, ON, 2015); The Lulennial: A Slight Gestuary, Lulu (Mexico City, 2014); and Some New Fires, Art Metropole (Toronto, 2014). Marsh earned her MFA from the University oaf Guelph in Ontario, and is represented by Cooper Cole, Toronto.

Emily Mae Smith is a painter living and working out of Brooklyn, NY whose solo exhibitions include Junior Projects (New York, 2014), Laurel Gitlen (New York, 2015), and a forthcoming exhibition at Mary Mary (Glasgow, 2016). Recent group exhibitions include I Dropped the Lemon Tart, Lisa Cooley (New York, 2015); Six Advertisements, Marlborough Chelsea (New York, NY); Comic Relief, Levy/Delval (Brussels, 2015); and Oh, Of Course, You Were Berry Picking, DREI Galerie (Cologne, 2015). Smith earned her MFA in visual art from Columbia University, and is represented by Laurel Gitlen, New York.