2018
475 MAIN STREET | BEACON
SHIFT
Curated by Max Seiler
July 30 – September 4, 2022

Gordon Hall, PANTS, 2021, Colored pencil and graphite on tracing vellum, 38 ¼ x 32 7/16 x 0 inches.
Jill Baroff
Natalie Beall
Ellen Driscoll
Gordon Hall
Susan Meyer
Christina Tenaglia
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 30, 4–7 pm
Fridman Gallery is honored to announce SHIFT, an exhibition of artists living and working in the Hudson Valley.
What is at the edge of abstraction and representation? When we blur the line between these two points what forms are possible? SHIFT includes artists whose work ebbs and flows between these two states. Responding to the rhythms and energy of nature, architecture, utilitarian objects, and the human body, the artists in this exhibition create new realities and identities through their own ways of deconstructing and decoding. By straddling the boundaries between these two worlds, new truths emerge, what was once invisible becomes illuminated, and new meanings are investigated.
Jill Barroff’s drawings and sculptures confront the complexity of a simple task. Through a logical process of rearrangements, she is able to produce distinctly different and varied outcomes from her original starting points. Baroff has a deep awareness of spatial concerns and is able to find a space of play, freedom, and diverse results. Gordon Hall works to evolve our normative understandings of and the relationship between the body and objects by deconstructing and abstracting familiar forms to the point that their function is called into question. By working in this abstracted state, Hall seeks to amend our assumptions of these forms and creates a space for conversation about issues such as support, community, identity, gender, and functionality.
Natalie Beall is fascinated and curious about the domestic objects we interact with everyday. Her work falls somewhere between something real and tangible, but also in the realm of fantasy and wonder. Beall sees this inbetween space as a productive area to push and expand our notion of what these objects can do beyond their obvious functions. Christina Tenaglia’s work reflects a deep communing with the common household object, focusing on the relationships between objects and the spaces they inhabit. Tenaglia leaves her work untitled, giving the viewer less information and communicating a need for a longer, slower look to decode and understand the work and our relationship to these forms.
Ellen Driscoll is constantly confronting the extremes and dichotomy of the built and natural worlds. Drawing inspiration from her own herbarium and the plants growing wild in her neighborhood, she creates work which touches on migration, space, and climate change, working to create perceptual shifts on these issues in the viewer. Inspired by utopian communities of the 1960s and 70s, Susan Meyer’s sculptures reflect the psychedelic tones of the era as well as their architectural achievements. Following in the counterculture pursuits of these communities, Meyer’s sculptures function as places to contemplate, discuss, and explore the relationship between the environment and the man-made world.
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