Jason Middlebrook @ Miles McEnery Gallery, NYC

Jason Middlebrook
Miles McEnery Gallery, New York
Through 13 April 2019

JASON MIDDLEBROOK

The Line Where an Object Begins and Ends, 2018 

Acrylic on walnut, 102 x 26 x 1 1/2 inches, 259.1 x 66 x 3.8 cm

Courtesy the artist and Miles McEnery Gallery, New York

MILES MCENERY GALLERY presents an exhibition of new paintings by JASON MIDDLEBROOK for his inaugural solo show with the gallery. The exhibition is on view at 520 West 21st. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication, featuring an essay by Mary-Kay Lombino.

Jason Middlebrook’s bold and glossy, yet surprisingly nuanced sculptures are a representation of man’s relationship with nature. Trees transformed into wooden planks with sliced cross-sections depict painted patterns comprised of geometric abstractions. Using three-dimensional constructions, Jason Middlebrook challenges viewers to think below the surface and invites them to reflect on nature as a work of art—calling attention to, how above any human activity, the natural world continues to prevail.

The three-dimensional works leaning against the walls of Miles McEnery Gallery embrace elements of both botany and geometry. Influenced by an aversion to wastefulness and a fond admiration for the natural world, Middlebrook’s pieces respect and acknowledge nature while simultaneously celebrating form through the artist’s brushwork. To create his intriguing planks, Middlebrook first meticulously studies the shape of the wood and lets it guide his next steps. Using the smooth side of the surface, Middlebrook paints the wood while taping off the margins of the patterns that in some cases completely cover the surface, and in others operate more as a net or a screen. This process allows the imperfect qualities of the wood to show through from the background, reminding viewers of the fundamental properties of the material itself. Through this process Middlebrook creates a juxtaposition between the artificial geometric patterns of the painting and the natural patterns of the grain. Additionally, the colors of the paint are purposely bright and striking to highlight the tension between man and nature. Using these techniques, Middlebrook draws attention to the tree and its form, making a statement with a delicate hand.

The natural world has played a central role in Jason Middlebrook’s work from the beginning. In this series of planks, Jason Middlebrook highlights the human interaction with nature, and emphasizes that art needs to reach beyond the space in which it is shown. As Mary-Kay Lombino describes, “For Middlebrook, abstraction is more than a preoccupation with line, form, color, and composition. In Middlebrook’s work, abstraction serves as a framework for his ideas about man’s degradation of nature’s resources and about the planet’s cycle of growth, decay, and regrowth.”

JASON MIDDLEBROOK (b. 1966 in Jackson, MI) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1990 from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1994 from the San Francisco Art Institute. He also participated in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY in 1994-1995, and completed an Iaspis Residency in Stockholm, Sweden in 2009-2010.

Recent solo exhibitions include Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY; “My Grain,” Galleria Pack, Milan, Italy; “Drawing Time,” David B. Smith Gallery, Denver, CO; “The Small Spaces in Between,” Gallery 16, San Francisco, CA; “Your General Store,” New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; “Gold Rush,” Peters Projects, Santa Fe, NM; “Jason Middlebrook: Mosaic Tree Stumps,” Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY; Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY; “There is a map in every tree,” Monique Meloche, Chicago, IL; “Line over Matter,” Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX; “Submerged,” SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; “The Line That Divides Us,” Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX; “My Landscape,” Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA; and “Underlife,” Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY.

Recent group exhibitions include “Arboreal,” Moss Art Center, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA; “New Acquisitions / Nuevas Adquisiciones: UAG Permanent Collection 2015-2017,” University Art Gallery, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; “Wood as Muse,” The Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA, curated by Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein; “Maker, Maker,” Children’s Museum of the Arts, New York, NY, curated by Paul Laster and Renée Riccardo; “Taconic North,” LABspace, Hillsdale, NY, curated by Susan Jennings and Julie Torres; “Cortesie per gli ospiti,” Galleria Pack, Milan, Italy; “Casa Futura Pietra,” Parco Archeologico di Siponto, Siponto, Italy; “Painting @ The Very Edge of Art,” Contemporary Art Galleries, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT; “The Big Show 9,” Peters Projects, Santa Fe, NM; “Painting is Dead?!, Figure One, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL; “Misappropriations: New Acquisitions,” Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; “Geometries of Difference: New Approaches to Ornament and Abstraction,” Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York, New Paltz, NY; “Into The Woods, ” Morris-Warren Gallery, New York, N Y; “NO W-ISM: Abstraction Today, ” Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; “My Landscape, abstracted,” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; “SITElines,” SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM; “Jason Middlebrook / Letha Wilson, ” Retrospective, Hudson, N Y; “Painting: A Love Story, ” Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX; “Second Nature, ” Albany International Airport , Albany, N Y; “ Visual Arts Faculty Exhibition, ” Benning ton College, Benning ton, V T; “Expanding the Field of Painting,” Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; and “Pattern: Follow the Rules,” Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, which traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO.

His work is included in the permanent collections of Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Altoids Collection, New York, NY; Arthouse, Austin, TX; British Airways Art Collection, Waterside, United Kingdom; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Harn Museum, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL; Marte Museum, San Salvador, El Salvador; Microsoft Corporate Art Collection, Redmond, WA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Modern Art, NewYork, N Y; NASA Art Program, Washington, D.C. ; New Museum, New York, N Y; Pacific Bell, San Francisco, CA; Progressive Art Collection, May eld, OH; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

Jason Middlebrook lives and works in Hudson, NY.

MILES MCENERY GALLERY
520 West 21st Street, New York, NY
www.milesmcenery.com

FLLAC: Barney, Davis, Newbegin Photo Exhibition as part of Vassar's 150th anniversary

150 Years Later: New Photography 

by Tina Barney, Tim Davis, 

and Katherine Newbegin

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center 

FLLAC at Vassar College   

Poughkeepsie, NY

Through March 27, 2011

As part of a campus-wide celebration of Vassar’s sesquicentennial anniversary, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center commissioned three photographers to create new work to highlight different aspects of campus life. The resulting photographs in the exhibition 150 YEARS LATER: NEW PHOTOGRAPHY BY TINA BARNEY, TIM DAVIS, AND KATHERINE NEWCOMING focus on the people, environment, and the culture of Vassar today. The exhibition is curated by Mary-Kay Lombino, The Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator and Assistant Director for Strategic Planning at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, and is on view since January 28 through March 27, 2011.

The approximately 40 new works created for this exhibition uncover a side of Vassar that is not often seen by the average visitor to campus. “Foregoing the typical view of architectural and natural beauty for which the college is known, Barney, Davis, and Newbegin instead focused on the idiosyncratic, the ironic, and the hidden aspects of campus life that lie beneath the surface,” explained Lombino. “They have pieced together a portrait of Vassar that reveals as much about the artists’ interests as it does about their subject.”

Each photographer’s work is presented in one of three adjoining galleries. Lombino noted that each photographer chose to represent the college in different ways — Tina Barney with intimate close-up images of people, Katherine Newbegin’s focus on dark and dingy forgotten corners, and Tim Davis’s search to capture the absurdity in everyday life.  

TINA BARNEY was born in 1945 in NYC. Monographic publications of her work include: Friends and Relations: Photographs by Tina Barney (Smithsonian 1991), Tina Barney Photographs: Theater of Manners (Scalo 1997), Tina Barney: The Europeans (Steidl 2005). Barney’s last book Players, was published in 2010. Her work is in such collections as the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York; Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut; Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

“Vassar is so pretty, so stately,” noted TIM DAVIS (b. 1969, Blantyre, Malawi). “I chose ‘Move Out Day’ as a subject in order to see this ideally arranged place in a state of derangement. Cameras love chaos as much as they enjoy order and I felt privileged to be able examine this campus as it folded up and began its annual bivouac home.”

Tim Davis’s publications include The New Antiquity (Damiani 2010), My Life in Politics (Aperture 2006), Permanent Collection (Nazraeli Press 2005) and Lots (Coromandel Design 2002). In addition, he has published several books of his poetry. Davis currently teaches at Bard College while living and working in New York City and Tivoli, New York.

KATHERINE NEWBEGIN (b. 1976, Portland, Oregon. Lives and works in New York and Berlin.) remarked that it took her “several visits before I stumbled upon what I felt to be the hidden world of Vassar . . . I spent so much time wandering in basements and attics, and it was through this process that I eventually felt I was able to get under the skin of Vassar. Simultaneously, I was drawn to the student life happening on the surface, and the tension that lies between these two worlds, one silent and aging, the second so full of life.” 

This commission follows a strong photographic legacy at Vassar that dates back to the early part of the 20th century. Throughout the history of the college photographers have been invited to campus to capture the architecture, people, and lifestyle. Two fine historical examples are Paul Strand who photographed several Vassar buildings in 1915 and Albert Eisenstadt who illustrated campus life for the February 1937 issue of LIFE magazine. Several of the original photographs from these earlier commissions are in the Art Center’s permanent collection and are presented in a nearby gallery to compliment the new work by Barney, Davis, and Newbegin. 

MARY-KAY LOMBINO was appointed to the position of Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator in 2006 and, in fall 2009, appointed as Assistant Director for Strategic Planning of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.  During her time at Vassar, she has curated several notable exhibitions, including Off the Shelf: New Form in Contemporary Artists’ Books; Out of Shape: Stylistic Distortions of the Human Form in Art from the Logan Collection; Facebook: Image of People in Photographs from the Permanent Collection; Excerpt: Selections from the Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn Collection; Faith and Fantasy; and Harry Roseman: Hole in the Wall.  In 2009, Lombino was named a fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL); and in 2005, she received a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship to study work by the late California Symbolist/Surrealist painter Dorr Bothwell. Lombino received a BA in art history from the University of Richmond and an MA in art history and museum studies from the University of Southern California in 1995. She has organized solo shows for numerous artists including Phil Collins, Ken Price, Amy Myers, Gay Outlaw, Euan Macdonald, Alice Könitz, Candida Höfer, and Mungo Thomson.

An exhibition Catalogue has been published. 

Palmer Gallery exhibition: Through the Student Lens: 1865 - 2011

James W. Palmer III Gallery

October 27 - November, 2011 (exact dates to be announced)

The James W. Palmer III Gallery in Main Building’s College Center will present the photographic exhibition titled Through the Student Lens: 1865 - 2011, curated by Hudson Valley artist Monica Church. Student photographers will chronicle various dimensions of life at Vassar and their work will be exhibited along with photographs by past students, selected from the archives.

FRANCES LEHMAN LOEB ART CENTER 

124 Raymond Ave 

Poughkeepsie, NY 12604

fllac.vassar.edu