Artists: Matt Connors, Kristan Kennedy, Owen Kydd, Diane Simpson, Erika Verzutti
Exhibition title: All Summer In A Day
Venue: Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, US
Date: November 21, 2014 – January 11, 2015
Photography: Courtesy of Fourteen30 Contemporary
Fourteen30 contemporary is pleased to present a group exhibition All Summer In A Day, with work by Matt Connors, Kristan Kennedy, Owen Kydd, Diane Simpson, and Erika Verzutti. An opening reception will be held on Friday, November 21, and the exhibition will run through January 4, 2015.
With its title borrowed from the 1954 short story by Ray Bradbury, in which a group of school children who live on Venus linger in a world of constant rainstorm where the sun appears only once every seven years for a brief moment. The exhibition responds in part, to the Northwest winter. While acting to disrupt and invert the monotonous, prolonged event that is the seasonal climate, the exhibition simultaneously highlights the contradictions of event and non-event inherent in the notion of change, both seasonal and aesthetic. In its presentation of works that embody different notions of form, weight, light and color, All Summer In A Day presents contradictions of parts composing the whole, be that climate, medium or genre.
“It was the color of rubber and ash, this jungle,
from the many years without sun.
It was the color of stones and white cheeses and ink,
and it was the color of the moon.”
– R. Bradbury
Matt Connors’ vibrant acrylic on canvas pieces feed upon the aesthetic history of abstract modernism, while embracing a quality of momentary natural and artistic intervention into traditional forms in his incorporation of rubbings and dripping paint. The distressed linen canvasses of Kristan Kennedy represent the final stage of an extensive process of artistic labor. Opposing the often perceived ‘precious’ nature of paintings on linen, her works are unbridled in their expression; handled and washed with vigor – marks literally erased by the washing machine and replaced by new marks in ink, dye and detritus.
Erika Verzutti’s early works consist of recognizable vegetable shapes and tools of artistic production, bringing forward questions of the intentionality of form and purpose. The simple shifts of context, mode and form of Verzutti’s works creates alien contexts in which the past uses of the constituent pieces are not experienced so much as recalled through a haze of artistic repurposing. Similarly, Diane Simpson’s sculptures use materials such as aluminum and leather in a formalist style that recalls objects, such as dress forms, whose functionality is contained within their aesthetic shape. Simpson’s central work in the exhibition articulates the timelessness of solid forms; the architecture measures at human proportions, and the manufactured quality of the work provides a sense of exoskeletal protection from that which threatens to erode.
Finally, video works by Owen Kydd extend the temporality of the exhibition towards an ambient existence, eschewing narrative structure in favor of ‘uneventful’ images of static forms. His minimalist videos display ambient motions of the everyday; as they disperse the burden of viewership and attention these works appear to breathe and exist alongside the viewer rather than in front of them.
As a whole, All Summer In A Day presents an intervention into the status quo that draws from the familiar and disparate, creating a world formed on the edge between a pool of sunshine and the shadow of a raincloud.
—
Matt Connors is a painter living and working in New York, NY. His recent solo exhibitions include KARMA (Amagansett, NY, 2014), Cherry and Martin (Los Angeles, 2014) and CANADA (New York, 2014). His work was included in the recent group exhibitions Forever Now, Museum of Modern Art (New York, 2014); In NO Time, The Modern Institute (Glasgow, 2014); and Painter, Painter, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, 2013).
Kristan Kennedy is a Portland-based painter and curator, whose recent solo exhibitions include Soloway (Brooklyn, 2014) and Fourteen30 Contemporary (Portland, 2013). Group exhibitions include OO, curated by Rob Halverson, Miasko and Rosen (Tokyo, 2013); Paint Off/Paint On, Halsey McKay (East Hampton, 2013); Z (Brooklyn, 2013) and Interior Margins, curated by Stephanie Snyder, lumber room (Portland, 2012).
Owen Kydd is a new media artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. His most recent solo exhibitions include the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival at Brookfield Place (Toronto, 2014), Document (Chicago, 2014) and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York, 2013). Group exhibitions include Under Construction- New Positions in American Photography, Foam (Amsterdam, 2014); The Cardboard Lover Today, curated by Annie Godfrey Larmon, American Contemporary (New York, 2014); and What is a Photograph?, International Center of Photography (New York, 2014).
Erika Verzutti is a sculptor living in São Paulo, Brazil, whose recent solo exhibitions include Misako Galerie Peter Kilchmann (Zurich, 2014) and Tang Museum (Saratoga Springs, NY, 2014). Her work has been included in Under the Same Sun, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, 2014); 140 Caracteres, Museu de Arte Moderna (São Paulo, 2014); and Matter & Memory, Alison Jacques Gallery (London, 2014).
Diane Simpson is a sculptor living in Wilmette, IL, whose solo shows include Washington Square East Gallery (NYU, New York, 2014), JTT Gallery (New York, 2013) and Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago, 2010). Her work has been included recently in the group shows Displayed, curated by Matthew Higgs, Anton Kern Gallery, (New York, 2014); My Hands Are My Bite, curated by Dan Gunn Monique Meloche (Chicago, 2014); and Seeing is a Way of Thinking, Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, 2011).
