March 28 - April 28

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 30, 2024, 4 - 6 pm
Zoom Artist Talk: Sunday, April 14, 4:40 pm REGISTER

440 Gallery is pleased to present Coming Apart, a solo exhibition of mixed media on paper by Robin Roi. These provocative works showcase patterns selected from the artist's collection of vintage wallpapers that are layered with imagery from the originating tale of Adam and Eve. This is Roi’s second solo show at the gallery.

Roi’s collection Coming Apart calls back to the biblical story of God creating human life. In the beginning, there was an androgynous being, male/female, “Whole and One”.

Vintage wallpapers mark the conception of these works. Backed by a rigid canvas, they are layered with other collage materials, acrylic paint and drawings. Though some of the work has been framed, Roi has eliminated the confines of a rectangle for select pieces, leaving them free-form with a "live edge."

Cut the Apple in Half, whose title references the Solomonic parable of cutting the baby in half, is an elegant collage of patterned papers and delicate drawings of the Garden of Eden. There, behind a veil of beauty, Roi camouflages her message of turmoil and divide. It is one moment past the androgynous being split into two. In contrast to the biblical story, this composition reveals Adam as the one who tempts Eve with the dangerous fruit. This role-reversal taunts the view that sin is innately feminine. Making Adam the tempter tests the trustworthiness of the tale that has filtered down to us — the tale that continues to color our lives and in Roi’s words, “what remains.”

Roi writes, “This exhibition asks the viewer to engage with the story in a new way — to take what is so overtly familiar that it has become invisible and examine how it continues to influence and shape our world.”

Roi has been a painter and designer since receiving her BFA in printmaking at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her MFA in painting at Claremont Graduate University in California. For several years, she was active in the Pattern and Decoration movement and was represented by Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York City and Bruno Bischofberger in Switzerland.

She worked at the Drawing Center, the American Crafts Museum and the Heller Gallery before becoming the Director of Decorative Painting with EverGreene Architectural Arts in NYC for 32 years. Her fine arts background and passion for the decorative arts were a perfect marriage for the position. Since retiring from EverGreene in 2015, she has focused on her own studio practice, working primarily with mixed media on paper. Roi has exhibited work throughout the U.S. and has been a member of 440 Gallery since 2020.

“Seen and Unseen”: Brown, Gibbons, Martin

The show’s title sounds like a paradox, but the implication that there are aspects to visual art that are unseen offers the viewer a tantalizing proposition — keep looking and see what might be revealed with time. The process of creating art can have mysterious origins. By looking, thinking, and being absorbed by the work we discover things not immediately apparent that the artist left behind.

The second half of the pandemic provided Amanda Michele Brown with the impetus for exploration from a new perspective. Using familiar patterns and techniques in these watercolors Brown sought control through the paint, taming her normally unruly forms. She heightened the saturation of her palette so that the bright, contrasting colors commanded attention. Brown states, “I’m always fascinated with control, chaos, and the coexistence of opposites within my work.” In these pieces, she is explicitly exploring how this era of pandemic distress, racial reckoning, and political turmoil was interrupted by moments of unexpected joy and how things seemingly at odds with each other came together. Pictorially the layered forms echo these mixed emotions.

Karen Gibbons’ love of materials is evident in her assemblages. Gibbons constructed them from wood, objects, and images that she calls “foundlings,” each having their own identity. These works also include traditional art materials such as acrylic, oil stick, and chalk pastel. Gibbons refers to each piece as a conversation, and it is one that operates on a physical as well as conceptual level. The back and forth between the materiality of the work, which includes transparencies, symbols, and geometric forms, and the conceptual elements, which incorporate time, spirituality, and nature, celebrate the beauty and resilience of humanity as part of the natural world.

Juliet Martin’s work features a combination of drawings, digital compositions, and monoprints mounted on wood blocks. Fiber is Martin’s usual medium, but here she continues her personal and intimate explorations with these new materials. Using her own set of personal emojis Martin’s passion for illustration is evident. As both a technique, and a symbolic presence the images imbue these works with the language of love, loss, and anxiety. The physical materials are the seen while the emotions are the unseen. Martin’s pieces are both visual and conceptual memoirs - as much poetry as artwork.