Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present the second edition of Summer Mixer, a group exhibition comprised of artists making their debut offering with the gallery. Providing a fresh narrative to the exhibition space, Summer Mixer artists present traditional and new-media works, featuring painting, weaving, collage, and digital art techniques. This exhibition will open with an artist’s reception on Thursday, July 17th, 2014.

Andrew Schoultz’s (b. 1975, Wisconsin) paintings and drawings serve as a historical commentary to the contemporary world as he sees it. The artist illustrates a tension between universal entities: the official faction and the opposing individual, the unavoidable clash of the individual versus natural calamity, and the perpetual incongruity of what is rational and irrational. Schoultz recognizes these themes from historical art that still resonate today: “The inspiration for my drawings and paintings comes from medieval German map-making from the 14th century and Persian and Indian miniatures. […] A lot of what I see going on in these particular forms of art are the same things happening today, it perfectly illustrates how history repeats itself.”

Erin M. Riley (b. 1985, Massachusetts) creates hand-dyed wool tapestries, woven on a floor loom. The artist transforms images that have been captured in a fleeting moment into detailed works. Riley sources “selfies” and car crashes, devoting about a week’s worth of time to weaving each piece. By investing her time and personal story, these voyeuristic images evolve from what was once transitory into something tangible and substantial: “I grew up with a single mom and three sisters so I was very used to girls and not necessarily sexuality, most of my work is just women, I don’t feel comfortable weaving men. I weave men as these trucks or as symbols—a lot of my automobile work is about how I kind of see men.”

Guy Yanai (b. 1977, Haifa, Israel) paints oil on linen landscapes, portraiture of houseplants, home exteriors, and office interiors—bringing new perspectives by color-blocking and flattening his quotidian surroundings. By simplifying the landscape in this way, Yanai develops a meaningful narrative between the artist and the object/space as an insider: “In my work I find the flatter I go, the deeper it is. It’s a strange thing, somehow I found out when I pair things down to their absolute essential—of what it would be like for you to kind of recognize something—then some kind of alchemy happens.”

Kristen Schiele (b. 1970, Texas) combines elements of collage, screen printing, and painting within her signature color palette. Vivid shapes contrast with darker perspective line work, giving the viewer an intimate look into an architectural scene that is simultaneously very human and almost alien: “I use lots of different kinds of processes to cut up the surface, jar the plane and shift the focus in the work. It helps me feel I’m putting time in the piece if not just offering parallel peripheral information.”

Michael Theodore (b. 1968, New York) creates two-dimensional works that have a three-dimensional quality, by utilizing both traditional art-making techniques and digital mediums. Theodore combines free-hand drawing with digitally rendered patterns using a robotic drawing arm—the robot conceived and designed by the artist himself—which carry out visual representations of music, furthering his exploration of perceptual sensations and combining technology with organic elements: “[specific works] explore new possibilities for new art making in a world in which the biological and the mechanical are increasingly enmeshed and entangled.”

Robert Larson (b. 1968, California) scours the streets for his palette—a sort of urban meditation—repurposing discarded tobacco packaging into meticulously arranged patterns, with each piece hand-cut to form geometric designs. Time and weather act as a natural patina to his palette. The artist explains: “[The paper’s] once identical and uniform surfaces begin to fade and abrade with exposure to the elements—turning them from homogeneity into infinite variety. From this collision of man-made materials and the forces of nature a dynamic palette of weathered hues, tones and textures is inadvertently created.”

Sam Friedman’s (b. 1984, New York) abstract landscapes utilize perspective and proportion. The continuous layering of pulsating colors and their combined effect comeS off almost as deletion, obscuring objects from the viewer’s periphery. The lines and shapes seem to be in conversation with one another, creating an otherworldly panorama. Each work inspires something different for each viewer: “Everyone is going to have some life experience that is going to have a connotation for a particular visual thing because, as humans, we are going to look for those connections […] I like the fact that I can create in the viewer’s mind a representation of something that ultimately relates to them.”