We work as a singular organization to manifest projects and support artists using a 21st century model, working together via video conference for the past 7.5 years, as we find ourselves scattered across North America with a wide variety of artistic approaches. Our diversity is what connects us and gives us strength as a group. The works in this exhibit represent a broad range of responses to 2020’s challenges, and its connections and parallels to artists’ more personal experiences. In a year of yearning for connection, of unsure outcomes, and intense isolation, we find ourselves working through different aspects of these challenges with a sense of directness and intention that is both intimate and universal.
The hand’s presence in each work expresses not only what is there, but also the weight of what is not. Leeza Meksin, Adam Liam Rose, Will Hutnick, Eleanna Anagnos and Lauren Whearty use various concepts of light and contrast as materials and images to hide and reveal. They point to a tension between what is present and missing from raw canvas vs thick paint, to a crowd vs the lack of a figure, to the residue or impression of what was once present, and voids of that which is not named or immediately evident.
The gesture is present in these works literally through the hands manipulation of a wide variety of mediums, including paper, paint, and fabric as well as documentation of physical gestures in photography and video works.. Eric Hibit’s economic ink gestures and Eleanna Anagnos’ paper works ooze with sensuous attention to material as well as economic efficacy. Zahar Vaks & Lauren Whearty use gestures of text in painting in different ways, as they document and meditate on memory and mark time and process. Gestures of physical and personal or familial care are evident in Tiffany Smith’s works while the observed gestures of others through the residue of actions or signage are evident in Clare Britt’s photographs.
It is exciting for us to have this rare opportunity to see our works in conversation with one another. This exhibition acknowledges and re-energizes the ways in which our individual practices and experiences enhance and reflect our contributions to Ortega y Gasset Projects as a whole.
For more questions about OyG Projects please contact us at oygprojects@gmail.com. For more information about the exhibition please email us at info@monacomonaco.us