Bridgette Mayer Gallery is pleased to announce a new solo exhibition by gallery artist Dana Hargrove at Arts on Douglas in New Smyrna Beach, FL. The exhibition will be on view November 1- December 13, 2014 with an opening reception on Saturday, November 1, from 4 -7pm. Both the opening reception and exhibition are free and open to the public.
The exhibition consists of geometric relief paintings inspired by the cairns that populate the valley trails and mountainous regions of Scotland. Cairns are the hand-built piles of stone that function as summit markers, guides, and memorials. As a cultural form, cairns signify a special relationship to the landscape. They are monuments of accumulated memory. For Hargrove, the cultural significance of cairns lies in their ability to provide a sense of community, allowing individuals to affirm their place in the world while knowing that the path has been traveled before.
"Cairns, for me, are loaded with ideals, of the constructs we gather through life, concepts surrounding what it means to have commune or live near/with each other. Parts of the whole, come together, like to like, and have union, forming and transforming with our participation," Hargrove stated.
Using the physical and metaphoric form of cairns as a point of entry, Hargrove questions whether or not one can find affirmation in a world driven by the artifice of consumer culture. Without resorting to nostalgia, the artist suggests that affirmation is possible if cultural artifice is embraced and transformed.
Hargrove transforms the exhibition space into a landscape where artifice appears naturalized. Her abstract cairns use saturated color, forced perspective, and simplified shapes to create the spatial illusion of depth. The artificial landscape draws attention to the spatial and temporal nature of experience, enfolding viewers into a narrative that extends beyond the moment of viewing.
Hargrove states: "As we traverse the land, we may find our search for utopia leads us on a journey that offers, on the surface, little more than a façade of our ideals. Perhaps we need to go beyond the surface, past the representation, and back to the ‘authentic.’ Or as this exhibition aims to do, continue to harness the representation and instill it with our own meaning to become the new real."
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Dana Hargrove received her B.F.A. from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, Scotland and her M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Hargrove has exhibited her work nationally and internationally since 1998. She has recently exhibited her work at: Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia; Greatmore Studios, Cape Town, South Africa; Emerged, Glasgow, Scotland; Studio 107, Austin, Texas; Festival of Media Art, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Crakow, Poland and was the 2009 winner of the William and Dorothy Yeck First-Place Purchase Award, National Young Painters Competition. Hargrove is currently an Associate Professor of Studio Art at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida.