Megan Greene and Carolyn Ottmers
September 10 - October 16, 2010
STILL YOU CAN HAVE A VIEUW
Megan Greene & Carolyn Ottmers, an exhibition of new drawings and sculpture. Accompanying the exhibition will be a catalog of Megan Greene's work along with an essay by Neysa Page-Lieberman, Director of Exhibition and Performance Spaces at Columbia College Chicago.
Megan Greene's current body of work includes drawing and collages built using Audubon bird prints. These pieces are an outgrowth of her earlier black drawings in which she had long used naturalist studies and various images of flora and fauna as source material. This exhibition showcases her interest in hybridization, extended to the treatment of surface, i.e. the seamless and discordant shifts between passages drawn v. photographic and representational v. abstract. The original image of each creature is elaborated and dissolved, elided with found images and subsumed by pattern. As a result the images are intermediate, shifting, and newly animate.
Carolyn Ottmers work often calls attention to the detail and beauty of the natural world. She accomplishes this by representing it in an exaggerated scale. In her most recent body of work, the artist has made use of her exceptional fabrication skills, by producing absurdly oversize yet still delicate models of plants cast in stainless steel. In the "Splice" series Ottmers has completed studies of plants that thrive in urban environments, such as those that are seen breaking through cracks in city sidewalks and growing up sides of buildings. The sculptures produce lyrical shadows on the gallery walls, creating an installation that mimics a forest or jungle.
Megan Greene currently lives and works in Chicago. A native of Buffalo, NY, Megan Greene graduated with honors from the University of Notre Dame in 1998, receiving the Emil Jacques Gold Medal of Fine Art and the Mabel Mountain Award for Achievement in Painting. She earned an MFA degree from Rutgers University in 2002 and was awarded the Dean Bettenbender Memorial Performance Award. In addition, Greene was awarded a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to live in New Zealand. Recent Exhibitions of her work include Hallwalls in Buffalo, Katharine Mulherin in Toronto and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Maine. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Albright Knox Art Gallery and the Burchfield Penney Art Center.
Carolyn Ottmers lives in works in Chicago, IL and received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the University of Austin, TX. Recent group exhibitions include Ironbridge Museum (Coalbrookdale, Great Britain), John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, Wisconsin), University of Alabama (Birmingham, Alabama), Laguna Gloria Art Museum (Austin, TX), Lincoln Park Conservatory (Chicago, IL), and the Walker Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, (Kearney, NE). Recent commissions include Frederik Meijer Gardens (Grand Rapids, MI) and the City of Chicago. Currently, Ottmers teaches in the Sculpture Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
For further information please call Natalie Schuh at 312.491.0917,
or email info@secristgallery.com.
Megan Greene, #34, 2010, mixed media on paper, 12 x 9 inches
Carolyn Ottmers, Splice, 2009-2010, cast stainless steel, 60 x 24 x 24 inches
Carrie Secrist Gallery | 835 W. Washington Blvd. | Chicago | IL | 60607
email: info@secristgallery.com
web: http://www.secristgallery.com
