TRANSIT TERRAIN and OTHER SPATIAL NARRATIVES
Co-curated by Madelaine Jennings McMahan
Mary Ann Strandell’s solo exhibition Transit Terrain and Other Spatial Narratives includes the following works: a site-specific, ink drawing installation with artworks, oil paintings, new 3D lenticular prints, printed wall images, ink studies, and the 2017 GIF animated film titled, These Exhaling Sounds (after Rumi).
In Windgate Gallery is a contemplative, site-specific installation titled Reacquisition. This monumental installation brings an image of the Palais Paar Viennese period room from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with an array of counter-active lenticular prints and lush oil paintings placed upon an in-situ, handmade ink drawing. The configuration of this main installation considers the inter-changing states of historic representation placed within this contemporary moment. The static image of the ink rendered Palais Paar Viennese period room is an appropriated classical Rococo boiserie. It is collectively known as a place to gather, converse, negotiate, and entertain.
The boiserie represents locations of soft political intrigue and various dalliances in the meeting places of heads of state, such as in Davos, or Versailles, or the White House. Through these representations and trajectories of historic place, we traverse. In films these salons set a tone, in history museums they transport the viewer. In our post-technological society, these places for gathering are transposed and replaced by our hand-held devices with texts, time-chats and desktop interactions. In Reacquisition, we experience a multi-verse of stimulus and connectivity in a nano-second. This process of motion and containment is a paradoxical read on content and experience. These antique sites of the conduct of power are balanced against our fragmented and contemporary moment. My installation slows down this experience to see our oldest technology, ink drawing, overlayed by renderings of architectural icons such as the 3D lenticular of The Apple Store Staircase, and Richard Neutra's California modern interior, as well as a Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin. Additional pieces include works from my various series: Mad Men, The Porcelain Flower, Bamboo Forest, and the Miners Shaft.
Using paintings and 3d lenticular prints, the exhibition continues to depict the material culture of architectural structures and natural settings combined with antique porcelain objects. These works share an observed reality with a certain fidelity to appearance. They are worked back into with oil drawing and a built up surface blur heading towards stationary focal points. “This long held process of mine is translated into the medium of 3D lenticular prints. With this medium, I create a multi-layered collage with computer software to determine an interplay of embedded imagery. Once the proofing is finished, fabrication includes high tech printing with an optical lens surface that allows the layers to move, activated by the viewer. Of these works, curator Juliette Yuan wrote, ‘The liminal presence of these painted environs, both the interiors and cityscapes, connote a fractured space-time continuum embodied by the pictorial plane.’” -Mary Ann Strandell, 2023
Bradbury Art Museum
201 Olympic Drive
Fowler Center
Jonesboro, AK 72401
July 13 to August 30, 2023
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