Elizabeth Harris Gallery is pleased to present fusion, the second solo exhibition of works by Ann Shostrom. The opening reception is March 27 from 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. The show runs through May 3, 2014. Shostrom’s work expands the possibilities of painting, drawing inspiration from conceptual, materialist, and gestural approaches to art making. Fabrics and used household linens are dyed, painted, embroidered, and sewn together, collapsing the distinctions between medium, genre, abstraction and representation, fine art and craft.

Of her last exhibition, Mario Naves wrote “Shostrom fearlessly mixes media, reaffirms the grid as structural arbiter and riffs on Pop culture with fond disregard. At which point, neo-dadaist assemblage is left in the dust by an encompassing, head-over-heels embrace of allusion. Employing, embroidering and juxtaposing fabrics–dyed and not, stitched, patterned and frittered away through often caustic processes–Shostrom traverses East and West, camouflage and tie-dye, street art, the New York School and grandma’s doilies.”

In “Fusion, Shostrom fractures her internalized ideas from years of operating in the discipline of painting. Materials used in “Cana” include a boot and a painting rag. It’s structure references the guillotine and cleaver to cut through received ideas of both color field painting and abstract expressionism. In “Fandango,“ a riot of color, form and texture (that resembles the U.S.), the artist goes off the grid in rough-sewn topographical construction, mapping a vision of chaos and renovation. The serenity of “Tanka” and “Reef” and the mayhem of “Market Place” are brought together in the richly embroidered “Cascade” where colorful blooms erupt from fissures in a landscape.

Ann Shostrom was born in Chicago. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from Syracuse University. Shostrom lives and works in New York City and teaches at Penn State University.