1716 Main Street

Apr 14, 2009

Topic: Events | Tags: , ,

gallery_1716

Back from a birthday break and headed to Gallery 1716 where three of UB’s MFA students will be exhibiting for the final time in their student career this Saturday night. The exhibition culminates two years of research and work in the graduate Visual Studies program by Shelby Baron, Ryan Legassicke and Abbey Hendrickson.

None of them exhibit rookies, it’s really a show that will appease even the most judgmental of gallery goers. Ryan Legassicke creates sculptural work that has a very metaphorical quality matched only by its suberb craftsmanship. His current project examines traces of technological progress in relation to our shared aesthetic experience, and the relationship between public and private spaces. Part public performance, part document and part artwork, Ryan’s practice questions the dominant ideologies which regulate our culture and responds to the resulting feeling of detachment from ourselves, each other, and the places that we inhabit. He comes by way of Canada, so Buffalo can’t lay claim to him yet, but if this exhibit wows like the Kenan one did, he may have to fight to keep his Canadian citizenship.

We’ve touched on Shelby Baron’s gifted ability to convey vices and crutches in a very honest way before; her current work is no less raw. These drawings are based on observations and lustful daydreams, a practice that began as doodles on any surface available to her growing up. She told me that the name “1716 Main Street” was just the perfect blanket title for the show and no mistake.

“The address is perfect as it pertains to all of our work. Abbey works with domestic imagery/themes, Ryan works with structural abandonment and public versus private space.” Shelby said. “1-(716) as a street number was relevant because it was necessary for me to dial to reach my father when I lived in Texas with my mother. A lot of my work is influenced by travel experiences and what I refer to as ‘in-home theatrics’ whether it be domestic disputes or watching cartoons. I enjoyed the concept of Main Street because Main Street is located in most cities, I actually live on Main Street in Tonawanda. If the show attendees remember our most recent presidential election, Main Street was used frequently referred to as perhaps the antithesis to Wall Street.”

And Abbey Hendrickson’s work re-contextualizes collected imagery and objects in an intuitive way to create a visual memoir or autobiographical narrative. The vocabulary of her large-scale, mixed media drawings is based on domesticity, the politics of inter-personal relationships, and on the ramifications of being a mother and wife in contemporary society. She has a blog, that I read weekly, if you’d like to follow her observations and design sensibilities called Aesthetic Outburst. A fitting outlet for her words considering the subjectivity of her work.

Opening Reception Saturday April 18, 7 PM

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