Simmons University presents “Entangled,” a three-person show of paintings, photographs and mixed-media works by Marc Van Cauwenbergh, Dorothea Van Camp and Jane Hesser, Nov. 12-Dec. 17, at the Simmons University Trustman Art Gallery, fourth floor, Main College Building, 300 The Fenway, in Boston.
There will be a reception with the artists on Thursday, Nov. 13, from 5:00-6:30 p.m. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public.
Curated by Trustman Gallery Director Barbara O’Brien, the exhibition explores gestural abstraction and its relationship to psychological states of being and human relationships. Whether created using a brush, washes of paint, studio implements, or the shallow depth of field of the large-format camera, the memory of the hand of the artist is potently in the foreground.
“I created this exhibition as an homage to my mother who found the narrative story line in every encounter. She could step back and find the meaning behind the action. I have translated her astute eye for people and personalities into a dialogue between works of art by three mid-career artists with much to say. In this case, the “action” is the formal bravado of the artists. Each artist has an incredible formal command; an ability to forge composition and gesture; to seduce the viewer with color, surface, and movement and then engage them in a dialogue with figuration, seeing into the composition and a personal point of view,” said O’Brien.
Marc Van Cauwenbergh’s translucent vertical layers of oil paint on a ground of raw Belgian linen suggest the movement of bodies through a cityscape. The glowing compositions placed upon the earthy palette of the linen suggest the inevitability of one body brushing against another. Assertive horizontal or diagonal drawn marks connect the forms and create a psychological charge. Born in Belgium, Van Cauwenbergh was the recipient of a Fulbright Grant for study in the U.S., where he earned his MFA in painting from the Pratt Institute in 1989. He lives and works in New York City.
Dorothea Van Camp’s “Ghoulies” series, mixed-media drawings that incorporate litho transfer and screen-prints, is being premiered in “Entangled.” Van Camp juxtaposes vector-based, computer-generated drawings and elliptical grids with gestural litho prints and paint pulled with a squeegee across the surface of paper embedded with wax. The notion of the “embedded” is an underlying narrative in oblique imagery suggesting disembodied heads and mangled carnage of roadside bombing. Van Camp did graduate study at the University of Cincinnati and earned a B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design in 1984. Her artwork has been shown and reviewed regularly in the Boston area for nearly two decades. Van Camp lives and works in Boston.
Jane Hesser’s series “Tangles and Snarls” suggests a connection between the fragile systems of roots and nests that she photographs, and our own frailties as humans. She combines old technology – a large format 4×5 view camera – and new – the prints are created from digital files and printed in close dialogue with William Morse Editions in Boston. Hesser works closely with Morse Editions to achieve the desired effect in prints that are at once objective close-ups of a biological reality and yet an evocation of intimate, subjective realities. Hesser earned an M.F.A. in photography from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2002. She has taught at RISD, Roger Williams University, and Montserrat College of Art and currently lives and works in Providence, RI.
Trustman Art Gallery hours are 10 AM – 4:30 PM, Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, 10 AM – 7 PM on Wednesday and Thursday. The gallery is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible. For more information, contact Kyle Mendelsohn at (617) 521-2268 or find us on Instagram.