Extraordinary Still Life Exhibit

EXTRAORDINARY

STILL LIFE September 9 - October 20 The Visual Arts Gallery New Jersey City University

Jeremiah Teipen, Still Life, 2018, 3D animated digital projection on wood panel 3 minutes, 33 seconds, 36 x 48 inches, courtesy of the artist Lina Puerta, Naiad, 2012, Mixed media, 32” x 39” x 21,” courtesy of the artist

Mia Brownell, Plate to Platelet V, 2017 Oil on canvas, 46x36 inches courtesy of the artist.

Laurie Riccadonna, Throw Away, 2019, Oil on canvas, 21 x 29 inches, courtesy of the artist

Phaan Howng, I’ll Be Back (detail) , 2022 Mixed media installation, variable dimensions, courtesy of the artist and Dinner Gallery

Nakeya Brown, Like Natural, X-pressions: Black Beauty Still Lifes, Archival inkjet print, 16 x 20 inches (framed), courtesy of the artist

NJCU Visual Arts Gallery New Jersey City University 100 Culver Avenue Jersey City, NJ 07305 njcu.edu/gallery

Takashi Horisaki, #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix, 2021, Mixed media installation, variable dimensions, courtesy of the artist

women’s narratives. Carefully arranged hair products, ads, and model photos are juxtaposed with fruits and flowers, drawing the viewer’s attention to the ways in which the notion of black beauty and femininity has been constructed within mass culture. The stark neutral background offsets these objects and images in a manner similar to that of product and fashion photography.

The consumer and capitalist-driven idealization of food in our culture was a starting point of critique for Mia Brownell, who has developed a unique oeuvre of still life paintings which often incorporate molecular biology. The resultant structure is in a state of constant flux and destabilizes the “still” life subject. Her Plate to Platelets series references both the still life tradition of presenting plates and food on a table’s edge along with telescopic images of platelets (blood cells shaped like plates) which function to repair the wounds in our bodies. By creating a linguistic pun between plates and platelets, Brownell alerts us that we are what we eat, and what we are eating these days may not necessarily build or repair our bodies due to excessive bioengineering.

Throw Away and related paintings by Laurie Riccadonna are close-up studies of the plastic debris collected by the artist from various local sites, such as Caven Point, Liberty State Park.

Plastic netting and bottle caps cover the surface of the painting, overwhelming natural materials like shells. Since plastic does not biodegrade, it accumulates and circulates in ocean gyres for a long time, polluting the environment and literally choking marine life. By including familiar plastic toys, some of which were donated by her family and friends, Riccadonna makes the global environmental crisis accessible and personal.

Margaret Murphy Vanitas, Women of Change, 2020 Oil on wood panel, 48 x 48 inches, courtesy of the artist

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In the early 2000s, Lisa Ficarelli-Halpern began her exploration of still life as a means to memorialize and reflect on what is considered precious in our lives, including different depictions of cell phones. Her recent exquisite painting of a shell, for example, is closely styled after Still Life of Flowers, Shells, and Insects (c. 1630s) by Balthasar van der Ast, but it includes numerous costume-jewelry insects and flowers which she inherited from her motherin-law, who died of cancer. By replacing live insects and flowers in the original painting with jewels, this painting reminds us of another implication of the vanitas, a cautioning against the materialist desire for commodities, while simultaneously serving as a memento of a lost loved one.

Nakeya Brown’s photographic series, Xpressions: Black Beauty Still Lifes, references the still life tradition in its table-top format, while critiquing its historical omission of black life and

With the theme of “Body As Landscape,” Lina Puerta produced a series of tabletop or suitcase-filling miniature landscapes from disparate materials such as artificial greens, clay, fabrics, and decorative ornaments. The clay forms in Naiad and other sculptures recall human organs or sea creatures which seem to thrive in a fabricated realm. Puerta’s ongoing Botanico installation transforms the neutral white walls of a gallery into a jungle, suggesting the resiliency of weeds and wild nature slowly reclaiming its space within a human-built environment.

Ashley Lyon’s meticulously handcrafted clay sculpture can easily deceive the viewer for its realism. Modeled after her grandmother’s quilt, made in the early 1900s, the ceramic blanket, entitled Wellspring, becomes an untraditional still life and an heirloom of family history, maternal lineage, and conveys a feeling of protection and warmth. While the solidity of the ceramic seems to contradict the softness of fabric, the fact that the ceramic can also easily break adds another layer of meaning – that of ephemerality vs. permanence. Lyon’s smaller clay sculptures of ropes are also suggestive of human relationships and various emotional states. According to the artist, Mother and Child “intertwines in a visual complexity mirroring physiologic and psychologic states inherent in any relationship between a mother and her child.” Her works demonstrate how a still life can serve as a powerful emotional vehicle.

Jeremiah Teipen’s 3D digital animation questions the expected ways in which we perceive conventional still life. Projected onto a panel with distinctive wood grain, his animation gives us an illusion that it is drawn on a wooden panel with charcoal or pencil. When the image moves, one realizes it as an animation, alternating between a still life with a bowl and loaves of bread, to a still life with a cactus and virus-like forms. By using digital animation technology, Teipen adds the fourth dimension of time to the long-standing art of still life, making its ephemerality palpable and suggesting new possibilities.

Midori Yoshimoto Ph.D. NJCU Gallery Director

he genre of “still life” was established by the time of the Northern Renaissance in the 17th century and usually refers to a painting depicting inanimate objects (anything from man-made to natural) arranged on a table or other surface. Its precedents include Egyptian funerary murals from the 15th century BCE and the Roman frescos from the first century CE, which depict foods such as fruits and game. Although the still life has been generally ranked below the genres of religious, historical, portrait, and landscape painting in the artistic hierarchy, it never became obsolete and was revived by Post-Impressionist, Cubist, Surrealist, Pop, and Postmodern artists throughout the twentieth century. The exhibition, Extraordinary Still Life, examines the ways in which current artists challenge traditional still life by representing contemporary subjects and/or using new techniques, elevating the genre to new heights in the twenty-first century.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, still life provided the easiest access as a subject to many artists who were isolated in their studios. Margaret Murphy shared that the daily act of painting flowers in vases “kept her sane” in this uncertain period. The two monumental oil paintings Murphy created in the early phase of the pandemic, entitled Vanitas, refer to the transience of life symbolized by cut flowers, and are executed in a stylized manner reminiscent of Dutch still life. One of them commemorates the names of the victims of police brutality in a tribute to the Black Lives Matter movement, while the other celebrates “Women of Change,” such as Beyoncé represented as a queen bee, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Queen Anne’s lace.

Murphy imbues her beautiful flower paintings with current socio-political content.

and diffusion of bonsais in social media and deconstructs its typical form by pixelating it using ChromaKey video paint on clay-made bonsai sculptures.

Notes: 1. Christina Houstian, “Objects of Desire: The Modern Still Life,” exhibition brochure (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1997), unpaginated. Accessed July 30, 2022. https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_249_300019097.pdf 2. Margaret Murphy, Artist Statement on bakerartist website. Accessed July 30, 2022. https://bakerartist.org/portfolios/margaret-murphy 3. Ashley Lyon, Artist Statement, courtesy of the artist.

Lisa Ficarelli-Halpern, Still Life with Flowers and Shells After Van Der Ast, 2022, oil on canvas, courtesy of the artist

Phaan Howng takes a science-fiction-inspired approach to address her ecological concerns regarding the contamination and bioengineering of plants. Her installation, I’ll Be Back, borrows the renowned catchphrase from the movie, The Terminator, to suggest the revenge of plants on humans who control, manipulate, and corrupt them. Her imaginary plants glow in the dark in neon colors, and camouflage with the environment to take over the human living quarters.

Howng drew inspiration from the Victorian era when domestication of the world’s flora took off and botanical exhibitions were in vogue.

In his #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix, Takashi Horisaki traces the international popularity of bonsai, a miniature, shaped tree back to banpaku, the Japanese contraction for the World Expositions which began in the late 19th century. Often displayed indoors for enjoyment, a bonsai can be considered a variation of still life even though the plant is alive. It is a domesticated version of nature, presented neatly on a pedestal. While investigating how bonsais were presented as cultural exports at World Expositions, Horisaki examines the dissemination

Ashley Lyon, Wellspring, 2017, Fired clay with mixed media surfacing, 7 x 8 x 19 inches, courtesy of the artist