Artists Neil Bender, Elisabeth Condon and Michelle Weinberg focus their polymorphous painting and installation strategies at the crossroads of an individual and collective cityscape. Their private manias—for signage, crooked geometries, interlocking modules, apocalyptic wallpapers, and imaginary terrains – are united by a common obsession with pattern, vivid color, the jetsam and flotsam of commercial and popular culture, and a constantly shifting pictorial space. Bender’s flowers and body parts fuse with Bataillian lushness. Weinberg’s Indian miniature-like urban vistas destabilize the familiar, and Condon’s spontaneous gestures and Seussian trees propagate a florid, backyard exoticism. These three distinct artistic sensibilities open hallucinatory channels and invite viewers to access the way in which contemporary life is stylized and fantasized via pictures.
Picturopolis opens to the public upstairs at the Newton Building, at 3901 NE 2nd Avenue, on Saturday, April 14, 2007, 7-10pm in conjunction with the Design District Second Saturday event, and remains on view through Sunday, April 29th. Sponsored by DACRA through an open call to artists, Picturopolis represents recent work by Bender, Condon and Weinberg. The collective exhibition encompasses drawing and painting on numerous surfaces, collages and wall installation that will mimic the geography of the urban landscape –from garden to cityscape, and the social structures they inspire.
Visit Picturopolis, 2007 gouache on paper, 18″ x 14″
