LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS
Upstairs: Chris Ketchie and Norton
Downstairs:
Richard Baim
September 2nd to October 7th
The Re Institute is pleased to present the work of artists Chris Ketchie and Norton. This two-person show will give both artists the opportunity to see their work together at a grand scale. This show is the culmination of their creative work developed for a series of art shows and installations over the past 2 years.
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Norton
Forest Goddess
2017
16" x 111" x 4"
Hand Etched Plexiglass with Shadows and Reflections, Gold Leaf, Paint, framed and mounted on wood | |
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Norton: I built an entire new body of work expressly for this exhibition. This was an honor I was not going to let slip away underutilized.
As a young child growing up in Japan I read a fable entitled " The Boy Who Drew Cats", about a young boy of my age at that time who, lost and alone, enters an abandoned monastery at evening time and spends his time painting realistic cats on the shoji screens. That night, while he's sleeping, he hears the sounds of fighting and screaming so frightened, he stayed hidden. When he wakes up the next morning he found a giant rat demon torn to pieces in front of where he'd been sleeping. On the screens he sees all the cats he'd painted thoroughly covered in blood. They had come off the screens to protect and save him. He grew up to become a famous artist.
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Norton
Headlong Flight
2017
Hand Etched and Formed Plexiglass with Shadows and Reflections mounted on wood
20" x 20" x 15" |
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Chris Ketchie’s work in painting and drawing is a physical and expressive process. It is a reaction to outside forces, personal events, fear, desire and the illusion. The making and the struggle is an attempt to understand and express this in a visual structural form.
Ketchie has for the last several years been working on a series of large-scale modular panel paintings. In 2013 he completed the first large- scale piece, "EAST" -1000 Paintings of Zhōng Guó. It is 10ft x 24ft made from 1000 wooden painted panels. The second in that series, “West,” is complete and the third is in process. Each of the individual 1000 panels becomes its own image and then just a mark in a larger picture or story. The different areas of the work or different chapters blend at their edges to create a greater story of the picture. These works are the size of cinema screens or temple walls and physically overwhelm the viewer.
Ketchie is also working with groups of canvas panels in various smaller configurations. In these smaller works there is an effort to depict a more graphic, sometimes repetitive, symbol-like images. These images often have a strong body presence. The physical experience of viewing a painting, the approach and the departure reflect the visual memories of the process of creating, stacking, arranging and rearranging the painted panels by the artist when the work was created.
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Chris Ketchie
WEST
2015
ink and acrylic on wood_
130x275x2 |
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Chris Ketchie West 1000 paintings of then 2015 Oil and acrylic on canvas 130x275x2 |
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Richard Baim:
Baim will show a series of photos exploring the nature of life and death.
All living organisms proceed through the same life processes, mostly in a linear progression to the ultimate conclusion. Along the way many of these “organisms” offer fleeting moments of great beauty, only to be followed by a descent towards lifelessness. In this transition, there are moments where the signs of demise become apparent. In some cases, the decaying parts are juxtaposed with the living making a visual comparison obvious, and necessary. In other images we see a number of genera at the same stage of decay. The hope is that we see in all phases of life there are jewels to be found, not necessarily obvious, but apparent if sought.
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Richard Baim Untitled /p> Inkjet Print 13x19 2014 |
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