Amanda Michele Brown: "Two Truths and a Lie"
January 5 - February 5, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 7, 4 - 6pm
440 Gallery is pleased to present Two Truths and a Lie, a solo exhibition of abstract watercolors on paper by Amanda Michele Brown. Employing broad areas of color overlaid with mixed-media mark-making, Brown explores themes that originate from a personal narrative. Identity, memory, and introspection become essential to the artist’s involvement with emotions and structures that are etched into each painting.
Contradictions that craft a personal story are represented by visual devices such as amorphous watercolor washes, geometric detailing, and gutsy gestural marks. As Brown says, “I wanted these abstract works on paper to invite the viewer into their own imagined world: a place built of reflections, experiences, and memories that are both real and contrived. Colors and layers reveal clues to feelings and truths.”
Each painting begins as a series of organic shapes of vivid pigment. From there, detailed, geometric marks are drawn on as a counter-point to the loosely-pooled surface of the watercolor. Every unique mark forms a visual language and creates a structure of unruly forms that represent to Brown the stories that are drafted to maintain a sense of self. The free-flowing marks break through the carefully constructed boundaries, reminding us that no story is the perfect truth.
This is the first showing at 440 Gallery for Amanda Michele Brown. Brown is currently the Gallery Director for the gallery. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and raised in Wisconsin, Brown received a BA in Arts Management and a BFA in 2-D Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. She has exhibited at many venues, including Trestle Gallery, in Brooklyn; the Janet Turner Print Museum, in Chico, California; the Creede Arts Council, in Creede, Colarado; and the Edna Carlsten Gallery in Wisconsin. Brown’s work is in several private collections, including Sotheby’s International Realty, London. In August 2022, at 440 Gallery, Brown curated the Body Politic group show of figural works by emerging artists. A truly local artist, she lives in Gowanus with her partner and dog.
Project Space: Fragment/Fracture
Fragment/Fracture is a group show featuring the work of gallery artists James Acevedo, Leigh Blanchard and K. Sarrantonio. Individually, each artist uses techniques and philosophies to explore how materials layer in unique ways. Collectively, every piece of art offers the viewer an opportunity to view the world through a changed perspective.
James Acevedo’s ink and watercolor drawings are part of an ongoing series titled Desk Views. The images are broadly representational, and yet they incorporate elements of abstraction and the surreal. Ordinary objects appear to exist in an alternate reality, calling into question assumptions of daily life. Referring to this series, Acevedo states, “The desk, while similar to a traditional still-life, is formally a flat picture plane, but I view it as a mysterious location. Filled with memories and observations, this new space becomes real, yet imagined—arrayed within a fragmented and fractured dimension.”
Leigh Blanchard is continuing her examination of the essence of photography as seen through alternative, digital processes. Her new work in Fragment/Fracture is larger in scale (20” x 30”), and consists of abstractions that are printed on inkjet paper. Blanchard manipulates computer-generated images that allude to traditional photographs, yet the resulting prints show the viewer a fascinating dialog between control and spontaneity. Layers of digital matter, devoid of a true recognizable subject, provide Blanchard with material to create energized abstract works that feel familiar yet are definitely of the moment.
K. Sarrantonio is presenting a grouping of fifty-four ceramic bisque tiles in an assemblage that makes us recall home and interior spaces. Revealing a tension between vulnerability and visibility in queer family life, K expresses a deeply personal image in this collection of objects. Each 4.25” tile is screenprinted with jacquard ink; large dot patterns become a metaphor for the meticulous and tedious daily work of parents and caregivers. The repetitive process of making each tile is, for K, a way to show how artists are uniquely positioned to build new gender realities, family structures and queer futures.