JUSTYNA DABROWSKI
PERSONAL IDENTITES | WEST GALLERY
august 23 - september 29, 2018
My work stems from the familiar, the intimate, and the remembered. I start with my own family photo albums. Working from these source images is a way of celebrating and understanding who I am and where I came from. Textiles and materials are important to my work because they represent a way of documentation. In a typical home there are many elements that relate to cloth and material; curtains, bed sheets, wallpaper, and clothing. These materials can be stained, ripped, borrowed and sometimes worn. In all they become the backdrop to the lives lived and shared, recording a passage of time. I often incorporate fabric directly from my home in order to reference my past, and to reinterpret the scenes and narratives of my Polish-American family within a new context. My goal is to harmonize paintings and fabrics that float in and out of a specific setting and memory.
CAMILLA MARIE DAHL
PERSONAL IDENTITES | WEST GALLERY
august 23 - september 29, 2018
Through painting and sculpture, I investigate how young women navigate their ways in a world riddled with contradictory messages, rules, and expectations regarding female sexuality. My work addresses the effects such incongruities and pressures can have on body image and one’s sense of self, and the ways in which women adapt to and cope within their given circumstances. Subtleties in expression and body language can speak louder and more truthfully than words to the human experience, and so, with these pieces, I aim to capture the unique and complex relationships individuals have with their own bodies in an enduring and palpable way. A parallel body of sculptural work, which merges the geometric with the sentient, studies man’s waning relationship with nature in present day, and the psychological unrest that can develop as a result of this distancing from the natural world. Through a transition of stark geometric forms to organic, figurative forms that express human discomfort, longing, and defeat, these works explore man’s cognitive struggle to exist within an strictly ordered, man-made world.
BRAD GUARINO
PERSONAL IDENTITES | WEST GALLERY
august 23 - september 29, 2018
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a garbage man when I grew up, because garbage men were strong, drove a big truck, and did something that was useful. It was a respectable occupation, something decent, clear and practical. And it seemed very manly. For a young boy, the idea that he would someday grow up to be manly was an important source of self-assurance. Boyhood ideas of manhood are straightforward, but reductive—being a man is more complex than being strong, useful, and good—and they do not account for individual differences and alternative masculinities. Much of what boys learn about the codes of conduct for appropriate masculine behavior is rooted in fear and ignorance, and their role models are often less enlightened about these matters than they appear. For many boys, childhood and adolescence are consumed with the search for the perfect masculine performance—one that suits them but also projects an image to the rest of the world that they are authentic men.
RONALD J. SLOAN
PERSONAL IDENTITES | WEST GALLERY
august 23 - september 29, 2018
I paint that which I have not visually seen before, but what I have felt, which is always changing.
GRIER TORRENCE
PERSONAL IDENTITES | WEST GALLERY
august 23 - september 29, 2018
My hope is that my paintings are the equivalent of a good deed. Making art is, for me, a necessity. The hope is that the personal, in its authenticity, becomes accessible, informative, and comforting. To be a part of the dialog of art is an invitation, a responsibility, a tradition, and a challenge to go further. Artists I admire, Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Gauguin, painted all genres: their work is a complete view of the world, both a vast and an intimate picture. I have worked with many wonderful teachers who have continued in the tradition of figuration as informed by Modern Art. As a humble recipient, a conduit, I am devoted to expressing what I have sensed, sought, been given, and found. I aspire toward a painting with a high and low comedy/tragedy, both abstract and representational: figurative, naturally living alongside reality, in a parallel existence, solid and palpable as a poem. The human figure is innately beautiful. Its intervals and rhythms sign the harmonics of nature, marvelous when engaged in a relational space and informed by light. In a particular context of a composition, a personal and iconic kind of weight arrives through a responsive, reflective, paratactic process. The Africans, Ancient Greeks, Massaccio, da Vinci, Taddeo, El Greco, Corot, Courbet, Hokusai, Picasso, Matisse, Beckmann, Bonnard, Balthus, engage and inspire me. My grandfathers and grandmothers, my parents, brothers and sisters, and teachers, ignite a love that these artists in history keep aflame. These artists and teachers are my friends. To my contemporaries and to my mentors from times ago, I thank you for our conversations of images over the years. Grier de Langely Torrence
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