Diane Rosenstein Gallery is pleased to announce (real evening buoyancy), an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by three emerging artists: Darren Goins, Ada Ihmels, and Shiri Mordechay. The title of the exhibition -- from a Darren Goins carved acrylic painting – describes the exuberance and optimism that overcame the artist after working late nights in his studio. In this way, each artist in this show offers an individual essay of personal space – a testimony of their studio practice and the act of art making as refuge.
Shiri Mordechay (b. 1974) was born in Israel and raised in Nigeria. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Mordechay received her MFA from The School of Visual Arts (NY) and works primarily with ink, acrylic, and paper to creates the lush and intensely figurative vignettes that populate the artist’s alternative worlds. Her current series -- “From after noon to midnight in Greenpoint Ave.” -- consists of both intimate and expansive works on paper that lure the viewer into a supranatural dream state punctuated by erotic fantasy, fear and flight.
Darren Goins (b. 1984) received his BFA from University of North Carolina in Charlotte, and lives and works in Los Angeles. He creates abstract carved paintings on acrylic panel by combining digital technologies (CNC engraving), with Verre églomisé methods of reverse painting. Beginning with his own drawings and found imagery, Goins modifies these through retro computer graphics programs which then distort the imagery and imbue it with personal memories of when he used the same computer programs as a child to make some of his earliest images. From this computerized data set, the image is mechanically carved and hand painted onto the back side of clear acrylic panel – resulting in a bas-relief in reverse. The paintings layer pattern and figure in compositions that echo such disparate artists as Charles Burchfield and Sol Lewitt.
Ada Ihmels’ (b. 1984) was born in Stockholm, Sweden and received her MFA at Universitat der Kunst (UdK), Berlin (2010). Ihmels now lives and works in Los Angeles. Her series of paintings and drawings combine the two mediums. Some of her paintings have small recessed openings inlaid with drawings while other canvases have large scale drawings expressively rendered over washed fields of painted color. Ihmels’ daily practice begins with quick and intuitive drawings that focus on a singular subject, but taken as a whole they include figures, text, landscape, symbols, and abstraction. In this exhibition, Ihmels partially recreates her studio wall in the gallery, with intimately scaled drawings hung floor to ceiling so as to envelop the viewer and invite them into rousing moments of creation.