Curatorial Statement from Kelly Kivland
As juror for 2020 Viridian Artists Exhibition: 30 Under 30, I was inspired by the diverse depth of contemporary artistic creation in the United States at this moment. It is a rare opportunity to engage with artists from a vast range of areas around of the country, from Alabama to New York City and from Rhode Island to Saint Louis. Viridian Artists Exhibition: 30 Under 30 not only provides valuable insight into current points of view, it is also indicative of emerging movements in art. While the final selection was hard given the quality of the applicants, I was honored to select the thirty artists represented.
The artists in the exhibition come from diverse backgrounds, and the work chosen extends across many approaches and mediums. Much of the painting and photography in the exhibition is representational and rooted in personal narrative as well as social and political subtexts. Yassaira Torres’ photography captures pedestrian scenes that pointedly turn ubiquitous moments into considerations of pause, from strangers seated together at the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, to the shadow of a man posed against an outdoor storefront on West 4th Street in New York City. Bowen Walsh Ferrie’s photography seeks to upend stereotypes of typical ‘Americana’ representation, such as in her photograph of two young black men riding horses along a highway, spontaneously captured adjacent to an auto yard.
Raelis Vasquez’s paintings bring us into domestic environments to give attention to the lives of immigrants of color in the United States. Vasquez’s oil on canvas painting, Nexcy con Libros, is a portraiture of a young woman seated at table with one arm resting on, or more accurately protecting, a stack of books, her gaze locked with the viewer. Ashley Pelletier’s oil on canvas painting is a hauntingly abstract self-portraiture, a blurred figure with no face created through the artist’s layers of scraping and manipulation of her own depiction. Ming Ying Hong’s graphite on mylar drawings depict dueling forms of masculine and feminine body parts—a fractured mouth, forehead or eye— intertwined with serpentine and thread-like objects, which are intricately clustered against a white background as if hovering within an empty abyss. Andre Ramos-Woodard collage, "I don't want to think anymore, I just wanna sleep", 2019, features a small cutout of a black male in the fetal position that is placed in the upper right corner with the red text “guaranteed” taped above his floating body, giving attention to the societal neglect of black male vulnerability. Emily Elhoffer’s slightly grotesque sculpture questions our comfortability with the fat, flesh and organ-like elements of our own human form. Engaging with the language of craft, Elhoffer stuffs several synthetic tube-like forms beneath a latex casing to create a visceral intestine-like mass, evoking a psychological reaction to our underlying physical composition.
As an exhibition, the artists presented in Viridian Artists Exhibition: 30 Under 30 give us insight into the continued interests and contradictions of self, culture and the collective understanding of being in our contemporary world. Each are teasing out how art can be a catalyst for social and political prompts, while giving careful attention to the tension between the subjects of the images and the viewer as well as the greater concerns facing our sense of belonging and power in uncertain times.