In her works on paper Sarah Fairchild depicts the natural world in a sharply defined, graphic style. The works are reminiscent of the famous wallpaper designs by Pre-Raphaelite artists such as William Morris, while being simultaneously infused with an unmistakably contemporary aesthetic. Employing both acrylic and flocking on paper, her works involve a complex dialogue between past and present, depth and flatness, design and painting, reality and fantasy. Meticulously interweaving flocking and acrylic paint, the works infuse common plant life with an otherworldly iridescent splendor. Brussel Sprouts, cabbage, beets, and crabgrass are transformed with nearly florescent pinks and blues, and daring use of perspective. The foreground often is occupied with plant life rendered in electric pink. These plants hover against swirling, dreamlike backgrounds that stand in contrast to the seemingly pedestrian subject matter. The works occupy depict and occupy the space between easily-defined categories. As common plants are reimagined with an explosive energy that seems to radiate from the paper like the birth of a microcosm, the works in both their construction and aesthetic lineage blur the lines between the common and uncommon.
Exhibition opens Friday, May 6, 2010, 6-8 pm
Exhibit Review | Rebecca Ibel Gallery: Paintings reflect on wrath of nature
Sunday, April 17, 2011 03:15 AM
For the Columbus Dispatch
An untitled painting by Kurt Lightner
An exploration of the temporal is the focus of the penultimate exhibition at the Rebecca Ibel Gallery.
In June, after 18 years of operation, Ibel will close her Short North gallery; she recently closed her other gallery space, in the Miranova building Downtown.
Ibel will become curator and director of the Pizzuti Collection. The private collection of businessman Ron Pizzuti will be housed in exhibition space to be developed at 632 Park St.
Fittingly, the next-to-last show in the Ibel gallery focuses on change. (She plans to showcase the works of Sarah Fairchild for the gallery's last exhibit.)
The works of Kurt Lightner, an Ohio native living in New York, examine the ephemeral nature of the rural environment. In previous works, Lightner has called attention to the demise of the family farm and the consequences of urban sprawl.
In his latest body of work, he focuses on debris. At first, the paintings seem to be simple, well-composed abstractions. Only later does one see bits of window and door frames. Clearly, these are the remains of homes wrecked by a natural disaster.
Although the imagery is that of tornado damage in the Midwest, the works are all the more poignant as one considers the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and the recent earthquakes and tsunami in Japan.
In all of Lightner's untitled pieces, the compositions have a delicate, if not fragile, rhythm and movement. Single brushstrokes form fractured boards and walls. Stacked precariously, the destruction is strangely hypnotic. The works allow us to consider the fragility of life - and how the power of nature trumps the plans of humanity.
Cautionary but serene, Lightner's paintings function as warnings of the unexpected.
Wed. July 31, 1895
Mon. Jan. 9 - Thurs. Jan. 12, 1899
Kurt Lightner
Paintings and Sculpture
Opening Reception: Friday, March 11, 6-8 pm
The Rebecca Ibel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings and sculpture by Kurt Lightner. In these new works, Lightner concentrates his energetic compositional style and beautifully complex palate in smaller format paintings. Drawing on the natural surroundings experienced during his youth in Ohio, his new paintings explore, in an increasingly abstract vocabulary, the destructive force that nature has on man-made structures. In these small, vital paintings, dense brushstrokes intersect disjointedly, both creating structure and destroying it. Opaque brushstrokes bespeaking movement and destabilization are interspersed with luminous color. Lightner combines the disparate and sometimes oppositional in beautifully dynamic tension.
The sculptures have words, sentences carved directly on the branches. The origin of the branch is from a tree taken from the artist’s family property in Troy Ohio and the passages from his great-grandfather’s diary. The diary describes the mundane routine of a mid-west farmer, the seasons and life in a small community. These works are related to a larger, ongoing project involving a complete year’s diary carved onto the whole tree.
Originally from Ohio, Lightner received his BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in 1993 and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2004. He has garnered considerable national attention in recent years, exhibiting in exhibitions in New York and across the country, including a solo show at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. This is the artist’s first exhibition with the Rebecca Ibel Gallery.
For further information visit us at rebeccaibel.com or call 614-291-2555. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11 am – 5 pm and by appointment.
