LIMINAL ENCOUNTERS
DECEMBER 14, 2017 – JANUARY 18, 2018
The Fritz Gallery is pleased to
present Liminal Encounters, an
exhibition curated by Amber Tutwiler, including works by Tommy Coleman, Katelyn
Spinelli, Autumn Casey, Mumbi O’Brien, Jacques de Beaufort, Sammi McLean,
Michael Dillow, Donny Barth, and Brendan Sullivan.
This body is work presents what is perhaps
uncommonly known as a “liminal encounter.” In these experiences, the functions
of our environment lose context. We become a witness to space, as if we are
seeing our surroundings for the first time, and have no prior knowledge of how
to place oneself in it. While these experiences can feel alienating, they also
make us aware of the peculiarities that regularly miss our gaze. When we pause long enough to see them, a form
so uncanny becomes known.
A liminal encounter “…enables us to
see clearly something that is, in effect, right before our eyes and yet somehow
obscured from us – something so taken for granted that it is ignored or allowed
to be disguised by a cloak of abstractions” (Edward Relph, Geographical
Experiences). In this collection of work, each artist confronts these
encounters in regards to language, environment, feeling, ritual, place, space,
and time. Ordinary becomes strange, and strange becomes familiar (Teju
Cole, Known and Strange Things).
Each artist is either from or currently
working in South Florida. As many of these emerging artists are Alexander W.
Dreyfoos School of the Arts Alumni, 10% of sales will benefit the Dreyfoos
Foundation. The opening night will take place on Thursday, December 14 from 6-9pm.
A closing ceremony will take place on Thursday, January 18 from 6-9pm. A live
performance by Mumbi O’Brien will be featured on the opening night at 8 pm. The
Fritz Gallery is located upstairs at 1608 S. Dixie Hwy in West Palm Beach. The
gallery is open from 10am-5pm Monday – Friday and 11am-4pm Saturday and Sunday
(by appointment). For more information, please feel free to email
info@fritzgallery.com, or call (561) 906-5337.
Tommy
Coleman (b. 1987,
Jupiter Farms, FL) is a South Florida raised sculptor, painter, and performance
artist. His work explores the space of change, what we find is constantly
inconstant. Through masterfully crafted objects, and staunchly sincere albeit
witty images, Coleman’s work implores investigations of honesty, intimacy, and
perceptional break downs which accompany anxiety and identity in the
contemporary climate - all done by way of navigating the boundaries of what is
considered permissible in the public sphere. Coleman received his BFA from The
Cooper Union, and his MFA in sculpture from Yale University. He has exhibited
at nationally at such museums as The Museum of Art and Design (NYC) and The
Atlanta Contemporary (ATL) as well as internationally at Homesession in
Barcelona and The Windor in Madrid. He is currently based in Long Island City,
Queens as a Resident at the Artha Project.
Katelyn
Spinelli (b. 1987,
West Palm Beach, FL) is a South Florida born artist. 'Collision' pieces
together the perception of anxiety and chaos. Focusing
on acousmatic sound extracted from field recordings, 'Collision'
responds to experimental concepts of reduced listening, repetition, and the
significance of slowing down time. Spinelli received her BFA from
Rhode Island School of Design in 2009, and is currently attending Yale School
of Art (MFA 2018).
Autumn
Casey (b. 1987,
Dallas, TX) draws on a variety of personal relics and pop-cultural ephemera to
challenge and question her subjectivity of the world at large. Her work follows
an intuitive approach, collecting and redefining the use of objects that she is
instinctively drawn to. The combinations are half autobiographical and half
investigations into form and color. Her practice, which moves from
sculpture to collage, as well as video performance, considers the history
of the found object and assemblage, re-employing existing materials in
unexpected, idiosyncratic ways. The result is a body of work that vibrates
along the tense cord between the personal and the vernacular.
Casey studied sculpture at the New World School of the Arts (BFA 2011) in
Miami, Florida. Her work can be found in various collections, including the
Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami) and Perez Art Museum (Miami). She won
the 2010 Optic Nerve XII from the Museum of Contemporary Art. She is
currently located in Philadelphia, PA.
Mumbi
O’Brien (b. 1990,
Blacksburg, VA) utilizes costumed performance, video, and photography to communicate a larger organized mythology. In this constructed narrative, the “Color Creation Myth,” personified colors of the rainbow spawn from binary colors, black and white. Gradually, she introduces additional characters and colors, which represent the non-paraded minorities. By constructing a fusion of existing spiritual and cultural ideological symbols, she aims to link this world of fiction to our ever-present reality. O’Brien received her BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design, and was awarded the South Florida Cultural Consortium Grant in 2015. She currently lives and works in Lake Worth, FL.
Jacques
de Beaufort (b. 1975, Lake Worth, FL)
is an artist and curator who works across painting, drawing, video, and film
out of Lake Worth, Florida. His recent series explores male and female
portraiture tinged with surrealism and symbolism. His goal is to bring forth a
presence, an “Other,” that lives in the imagination but can nevertheless be
coaxed to participate in our physical world through the application of skill
and patience. Previously, de Beaufort ran UNIT1, an exhibition and performance
space in Lake Worth. He received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts,
and is currently an Associate
Professor of Visual Art and Art History at Palm Beach State College.
Sammi McLean (b. 1989, West Palm Beach, FL), originally from South Florida, received her MFA
from the Florida Atlantic University (2017) with a concentration in
Printmaking. With an experimental approach to printmaking, she has been
researching contemporary applications of laser etching, bringing
alternative plate building methods into her studio practice. Through her
work, she creates an archive of personal ephemera. In her recent series, she investigates
text and language through cataloguing overheard sentiments from daily
interactions. These statements are taken out of context, and reassembled into
cascading shadows. McLean is currently an adjunct professor of printmaking at
Florida Atlantic University, and has been awarded the Friedland Project Grant,
Lynn Travis Stendor Women in the Visual Arts Scholarship, and scholarship
support for a semester abroad in Berlin, Germany.
Michael Dillow (b. 1988,
Philadelphia, PA) is a visual artist born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. In
2010, he earned his BA in Film and Media arts from Temple University. Currently
based in Lake Worth, FL, Dillow’s recent work functions as a topographic survey
of south Florida’s transient landscape. Borrowing convention from vernacular
photography methodology, his work aims to develop a conversation between the
real and the imagined—drawing from personal experience and the universal
stories of identity, displacement, and resilience. In 2016, Michael was awarded
a Graduate Teaching Assistantship from Florida Atlantic University, where he is
currently pursuing his MFA in visual arts, with a concentration in photography.
Recently his work was exhibited in the Center for Fine Art Photography’s group
exhibition titled, Photography as Response.
Brendan Sullivan (b.
1986, Juno Beach, FL) is an artist, writer and musician currently living and
working in Brooklyn, New York. His current body of work illustrates
internal plains and flattened frames of dreamlike consciousness, each quietly
informed by the noise of the outside world. Born in South Florida, he
graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA in
Interdisciplinary Sculpture in 2009 and is a cofounder and former director of
the Baltimore-based artists space and gallery Open Space (2009-2017), as
well as the founder and General Manager of The Crown (2013-2017), a Baltimore
arts & entertainment venue. He has participated in readings and group
shows in Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston and West Palm Beach, Florida.
Donny Barth II (b. 1986, West Palm Beach, FL) is a South Florida based photographer. Barth’s work is an ongoing visual effort to suspend familiarity and the present moment in an effort to engender an artificial nostalgia. He actively seeks to capture vulnerability, while embracing the beautiful, miserable, and mundane. His series of Polaroids, “Since We Last Spoke,” and recent self-published photo book HOMESICK (a collaborative effort with Michael Dillow) both serve as explorations into the nostalgia of things unknown: the feeling and idea of somewhere familiar you’ve never been before. Barth graduated from Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts in 2004.
