Exhibition Details
HEAD ON, a group exhibition of contemporary portraits conveyed in painting and photography, will be featured at Clark Gallery from March 2 through April 3, 2010. The thirteen distinguished gallery and invited artists included in HEAD ON are painters Randall Deihl, Frank Egloff, Gregory Gillespie, Gregory Grenon, Sharon Kaitz, Marcus Kenney, Jane Smaldone, and Andrew Stevovich and photographers Linda Connor, Eric Gottesman, Deborah Hamon, Pieter Hugo, and David Prifti. All are welcome to join the artists for a reception on Saturday, March 13th from 4-6pm.
The paintings and photographs in HEAD ON reference portraiture’s traditions and history, compositional formalities, and symbolism while simultaneously cracking the veneer of those historically founded elements to present contemporary interpretations and expressions of identity. The diverse perspectives and varied artistic aesthetics in this exhibit share an affinity for communicating individuality in a community that stretches around the world. Figures of different ages, creeds, and color gaze at the viewer, linked together by both their similarities and differences. Unapologetic “head on” perspectives are countered by images in which the figure is either seamlessly incorporated into his or her surrounding landscape or is evidently affected by that landscape. The figures portray a cultivated identity often designed to conceal vulnerabilities within, anxieties and emotions that manage to reach the viewer through expression, composure, and detachment.
Clark Gallery is honored to include a selection of portraits and self-portraits by venerable American painter Gregory Gillespie. Recognized as one of the most significant and interesting painters of the 20th century, Gillespie deftly painted within the schools of realism and surrealism. He defied art historical expectations for his time to establish a unique approach and perspective on painting and drawing. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Whitney Museum of Art, and MFA, Boston. HEAD ON features Gillespie’s Self Portrait Triumphant (oil on panel, 1993-2000), the last painting that he completed in his lifetime. Set against a bright blue background, the painting depicts Gregory with fists held high, laughing exuberantly as his gaze focuses beyond the viewer.
Powerful images from photographer Pieter Hugo’s The Hyena & Other Men series are also featured in HEAD ON. Hugo made the photographs while traveling with an itinerant group of men, a young child, three hyenas, four monkeys, and several rock pythons in Nigeria. Minstrels who use the animals to entertain crowds while selling traditional medicines, the Hyena Men dominate and depend upon these animals. Care and affection are contrasted by cruelty, a relationship propelled by economic survival and the group’s nomadic lifestyle. In Umoru Murtala with School Boy, Asaba, Nigeria, 2007, Hugo focuses our gaze on a pensive young man holding a long switch and the end of a chain, which coils along the ground at his feet and up to the collar worn by his companion, a monkey. The two sit on what was once the hood of a car, a savaged symbol of the hardships carried by the men and animals. Hugo’s compelling photographs of Africa have been exhibited in galleries and museums across the globe.
