This is your last call to see select exhibitions at Artspace before they close with artist talks on Sunday, May 21, at 2 p.m. The works by Patrick Gregory, Wolfgang Jasper, Julia E. Pfaff and Nancy Strube approach their subjects from a widely different places, but are related through the use of digital technology.
Jasper maintains a dual artistic personality: photographer by day, maker by night in charcoal and oil of dark, intense — and on occasion whimsical — pieces. Here, in the exhibition “Bad Dreams of a New World Order,” he’s merged two interests by photographing his drawings and then rearranging them and producing giclee prints, and some of these, too, he further attended to with charcoal. The pieces are detailed and reward close viewing — Jasper's worked in these elements for decades — but you might fear getting pulled into one, or having something leap out.
“The Garden of Eden in Decline” presents a photographic symmetry as it harkens to the weird plants and figures of Heironymous Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights,” though it also resembles a magnified cell of some strange organism.
Wolfgang Jasper: “The Garden of Eden in Decline“ (Image courtesy Artspace)
Within “Hook and Line” is what can be construed as an abstracted grimacing face, as though viewed after having fallen face down onto an alien alleyway after a rough weekend.
Jasper's “Hook and Line” (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
Nearby, juxtaposed against Jasper’s dark visions, but just as whirling and kinetic, is Nancy Lea Strube’s Mardi Gras-bright “Wonderland,” where situations and figures emerge from whirls and whooshes of energetic digital drawing that assemble the fresh boldness of street art. Walking by the pieces is like passing parade floats, but, pausing to examine them, one can view layers of movement. The work “Meditation: Resplendent Bird” reminded me of a great carnival ride on a wild midway. "Celebration Kiss" conveys the emotional vibrations of a spur-of-the-moment bussing amid a busy, partying street.
Detail from Nancy Strube's "Meditation: Resplendent Bird" (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
Detail from Nancy Strube's "Celebration Kiss" (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
Filmmaker Patrick Gregory’s “Persons, Places and Things," a grouping of three video installations, is tucked in a meditative room between the galleries, and offers monitors displaying — in color and black and white, with sound and in silence — glimpses of travels: busy foreign streets, glimmering rivers, dancing shadows created by passing trains on an overhead Richmond trestle, and a tunnel drive while a book-on-tape Hollywood executive recalls a costly advertisement readjustment for a Warren Beatty movie. Removed from context, and seated before them, the viewer becomes a being keeping watch over varied activities. The motions and maneuvers of man-made environments are juxtaposed with the processes of nature.
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Julia Pfaff's “Stitches” VIII (2016), IX (2017) , VI (2015), V (2015) (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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"Repeat II" by Julia Pfaff (Image courtesy Artstpace)
The pieces in Julia E. Pfaff’s “Contour Series: Whole Cloth Quilts” are layered from scans of hand-dyed, -printed and -stitched fabric, which she digitally manipulates and then inkjet prints using fabric dye. “The final fabric is free-motion machine-quilted,” Pfaff explains in her artist’s statement. “The resulting whole cloth quilts are a 21st-century blend of low- and high-tech processes.”
More of Pfaff’s work, “The Tiny Quilt Project,” is on exhibit until May 30 in the Gellman Room of the Main Branch of the Richmond Public Library.
In the smaller rear-most space is “Patterns and Parts — The Building Blocks Artists Use.” Two notable pieces include “Feminine,” by Dana Frostick, who used sharpie and acrylic on board to generate a sense of wild travel overlaying a fanciful map-scape. Susanne K. Arnold’s caustic assemblage “At The Back of the North Wind: Fire Babies,” features figures — are they emerging out of the flames or being cast into them as sacrifice? Perhaps it’s a matter of personal philosophy.
Following this show is the anticipated seventh biennial Radius 250. The geometric title is derived by its displaying work from 250 miles around Richmond. The exhibition of more than 80 pieces will fill Artspace and includes artists from Washington, D.C.; New Jersey; Maryland; West Virginia; North Carolina and Virginia locales, from Roanoke and Harrisonbug to Crozet and St. Stephen’s Church. The works were juried by curator Francis Thompson to offer a robust roster from the varied artistic disciplines.
From the Radius 250 exhibition, Gerry Bannan, Roanoke, “Unraveling: Half a Page of Scribbled Lines,” ballpoint pen on mylar (Image courtesy Artspace)
Julia E. Pfaff’s "Contour Series: Whole Cloth Quilts,” Wolfgang Jasper’s "Bad Dreams of a New World Order,” Nancy Strube’s "Wonderland — Exhibition of imagination, color & form" and Patrick Gregory’s "Persons Places and Things” are on view at Artspace, 0 E. Fourth St., through May 21, with closing artist talks Sunday, May 21, at 2 p.m. The “Radius 250” opening is Friday, May 26, from 7 to 10 p.m., with juror’s talk and awards at 7:30 p.m. There will be music and refreshments. The exhibitions are free and open to the public.
