Teresa Cole | Shift

T E R E S A C O L E reception

january 6th

6 – 9 pm

TERESA COLE Shift All the world's a text. Or so Teresa Cole has convinced us in this exhibition. A text that is captured, altered, and manifested into the language of art. Her scripts are found in the dances of shadow and pattern that she has gathered together into systems of classification, like so many biological specimens to be dissected, frozen and pinned-down under the weight of her scrutiny. This text of pattern and shadow is seamless, endless and largely ephemeral. As she pictures order out of chaos, parts of this largely blackand-white world are truncated, edited and cropped as they are tessellated into a form of language. As she drops image on top of image, filling the white space of the sheet, meaning accretes within the picture, as stacked motifs collide like metaphors. Like metonymies.

Her patterns are found objects, derived from the structures of everyday life. They are then organized into the space of geometric regularity, in single sheets or across the space of grids or diptychs. Appearances reoccur and remerge, such as with the dress forms or "shifts." Shift. This is an important word and idea to Cole. As a noun, "shift" describes the dress form that she uses as a carrier loaded with patterns and figuration. As a verb, she uses it is a metaphor for the ways in which she shifts or moves from subject to subject, changing position and direction from print to print. The word also connotes the process of moving from the world of shadow and pattern into pictured orders-a shift of vision, a shift of purpose. Describing the dress form yields other active verbs: "figure," and "shape," among others. These verbs describe artmaking while outlining guideposts to the creative process. Imagery shifts, ideas figure and meaning takes shape. The text of shadows and chaos, patterning and order, is captured and cropped, pictured and pulled through to the realm of art. — Michael Plante, Tulane University

exhibition dates

january 5th – january 31st, 2007

Front Cover: Snag, 48" x 78", hand carved relief print on paper, 2006

Pattern Shadows 42" x 96" hand carved relief on paper 2006

Blossom

Chaos Theory

Dot Pattern

Ironwork Pattern

Net Pattern

Seaweed Pattern

Text Pattern

swatches of order and chaos 48" x 12" intaglio prints on paper 2006

Untitled Pattern 1 48" x 42" hand carved relief print on paper 2006

Untitled Pattern 2 48" x 84" hand carved relief print on paper 2006

518 JULIA STREET, NEW ORLEANS, LA 70130

Shift (detail), 200 double sided relief and intaglio prints, 2006 ARTWORK © TERESA COLE 2006 CATALOG © GALLERY BIENVENU

504.525.0518

www.gallerybienvenu.com