past exhibition
EDGE of the MASK
Dreams, Ghosts and Historical Memories
with artists
Ruth Reese & Sam Vernon
OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday April 29th 2016 from 6pm to 9pm
Dreams, Ghosts and Historical Memories
with artists
Ruth Reese & Sam Vernon
OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday April 29th 2016 from 6pm to 9pm
For the first time since Reese Gallery opened to the public over two years ago, this artist-run space will be exhibiting the works of its namesake founder, Ruth Reese. Fantastic and creaturely, her clay sculptures inhabit the margin of dreams and reach between worlds. In Edge of the Mask, a two-person show, Reese's work will be in conversation with the artistic explorations of Sam Vernon, who also taps into the power of ghost and historical memory.
REESEgallery | 3410 Wisconsin Avenue | Saint Louis | MO | 63118 | www.thereesegallery.com
Run and Hours: 4.29 to 5.28 | Wed and Sat from 1pm to 4pm
Run and Hours: 4.29 to 5.28 | Wed and Sat from 1pm to 4pm
about EDGE of the MASK
Thinning boundaries between psychology, politics and intuition, two artists respond to identities coalescing around dreams, ghosts and historical memories. Artists, Ruth Reese and Sam Vernon bring together many of the varied and mysterious faces of our collective unconscious as it re-interprets the timeless art-form of the mask for contemporary audiences. This event is free and open to the public and will run until May 28th. 2016.
about the artist | RUTH REESE
In her clay chimera, sculptor Ruth Reese unites human with animal, and flora to fauna. Her fantastical humanoid forms become extended, and sometimes overcome as they engage a spiritual agency beyond the human. Reese invites a diversity of characters into her fairytale tropes. With these forms, she can ask questions about the meaning of desire, the spiritual quest for mystery, the self-consumption of nature, the role of change, death and grace in human life. Fantastical and creaturely, her sculptures live on the margin of dreams and reach between worlds.
Ruth Reese is a local artist with her MFA from Washington University and her BA in English at Loyola University in New Orleans. She has exhibited widely, including at Red Heat (OK), Visions in Clay (CA), NCECA (AZ), the Racine Art Museum (WI), the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art (TX), the Evansville Museum (IN) and many more. Ruth Reese is director of Reese Gallery, an artist-run space, which will be hosting her work for the first time since the gallery opened in March of 2014.
about the artist | SAM VERNON
Printmaker and installation artist, Sam Vernon, brings a process aplty termed, “ghosting”, to her work. Vernon draws, Xeroxes and prints at each state of the image’s evolution: deleting, adding and collaging until the image is complete. With soft disappearing marks, the drawing becomes a shadowy and evolving representation of its original self. In this exhibition, her mysterious black and white imagery includes negative space silhouettes, hovering over leaves and field grasses. The silhouette in absence becomes a vehicle or mask - in which she is able to create a meta-history, an open-ended chronicle exploring post-colonialilty. In her investigations of historical memory, Sam Vernon, creates a Gothic visual art in which black narratives expand the genre.
Sam Vernon earned her MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University in 2015 and her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2009. Vernon has most recently exhibited with the Seattle Art Museum, Ewing Gallery of Art & Architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the Emery Community Arts Center at the University of Maine, Farmington, MoCADA, or the Museum of Conteorary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn.
about the artist | RUTH REESE
In her clay chimera, sculptor Ruth Reese unites human with animal, and flora to fauna. Her fantastical humanoid forms become extended, and sometimes overcome as they engage a spiritual agency beyond the human. Reese invites a diversity of characters into her fairytale tropes. With these forms, she can ask questions about the meaning of desire, the spiritual quest for mystery, the self-consumption of nature, the role of change, death and grace in human life. Fantastical and creaturely, her sculptures live on the margin of dreams and reach between worlds.
Ruth Reese is a local artist with her MFA from Washington University and her BA in English at Loyola University in New Orleans. She has exhibited widely, including at Red Heat (OK), Visions in Clay (CA), NCECA (AZ), the Racine Art Museum (WI), the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art (TX), the Evansville Museum (IN) and many more. Ruth Reese is director of Reese Gallery, an artist-run space, which will be hosting her work for the first time since the gallery opened in March of 2014.
about the artist | SAM VERNON
Printmaker and installation artist, Sam Vernon, brings a process aplty termed, “ghosting”, to her work. Vernon draws, Xeroxes and prints at each state of the image’s evolution: deleting, adding and collaging until the image is complete. With soft disappearing marks, the drawing becomes a shadowy and evolving representation of its original self. In this exhibition, her mysterious black and white imagery includes negative space silhouettes, hovering over leaves and field grasses. The silhouette in absence becomes a vehicle or mask - in which she is able to create a meta-history, an open-ended chronicle exploring post-colonialilty. In her investigations of historical memory, Sam Vernon, creates a Gothic visual art in which black narratives expand the genre.
Sam Vernon earned her MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University in 2015 and her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2009. Vernon has most recently exhibited with the Seattle Art Museum, Ewing Gallery of Art & Architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the Emery Community Arts Center at the University of Maine, Farmington, MoCADA, or the Museum of Conteorary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn.