A spokesperson says---
"...Objective Truths, a group exhibition featuring artists from the gallery’s program including Aaron Glasson, Chris Johanson, Suchitra Mattai, Evan Nesbit, Wendy Red Star and Brenna Youngblood, among others. Responding to the changing conditions of the 21st century, works in the exhibition bridge the distance between representation and non-representation by reconfiguring color, light, material and texture as tools for rendering ineffable sensibilities. In tandem with the artists’ diverse approaches is a shared engagement with phenomenology and the malleability of meaning, centering the process of introspection and interpretation above reaching conclusive outcomes.
Made with multiple layers of natural pigment, oil paint, sand and beeswax, Aaron Glasson depicts the sacred power of the natural world in paintings that filter micro and macro living systems through a lens of abstraction. He portrays life’s essence as a multitude of voices and forces, visible and invisible, through a visual language developed from extensive time spent in wilderness. Chris Johanson’s colorful paintings are interconnected expressions of contemporary life and its diverse phenomena that emerge from the overlap between figuration and nonobjective imagery. Reminiscent of ancient frescoes and mandalas, Johanson’s compositions reflect on themes of impermanence, fluidity and the fleeting nature of existence.
In mixed-media works that combine found objects with richly-colored textiles, Suchitra Mattai offers reimagined visions of the past that collapse time and space, allowing her to weave narratives of a future without hierarchies of power. Evan Nesbit’s textured paintings expand his process of rendering space and depth through visual cues, using pattern, color and material relationships to challenge the pictorial space of painting and its modes of perception.
Wendy Red Star’s ongoing series of bishkisché paintings depict heirloom rawhide cases that were used by Indigenous tribes throughout North America. Developed from the artist’s extensive research into Apsáalooke history, these works on paper serve as visual records of Indigenous craft practices and, simultaneously, function as unique art objects—reflecting a complex symbology of geometric designs comprised of intersecting triangles, lines and rectangles rendered in rich pigments.
Brenna Youngblood’s interrogation of abstract concepts forms the nucleus of energy-filled works that blur the distinction between painting and sculpture. Through accumulations of thick impastos, transparent washes and loose brushstrokes, her canvases manifest a playful intermingling of shapes, patterns and textures which explore the layered meanings of American material culture.
The works in Objective Truths can be understood as a series of aesthetic inquiries that evade simple analysis: rather than reflect the world around us as we see it, they embody the very essence of artistic expression that can’t be captured through words alone. Seen as a whole, this exhibition invites viewers to liberate their imagination from the confines of reality to see with their mind’s eye what lies beyond the world as we know it..."
