Exhibit Information
Elements of Abstraction
St Louis Artists' Guild, Clayton, MO
November 20, 2015- January 6, 2016
Juror: Claire Ashley, Artist, Professor at School of the Art Institue of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Elements of Abstraction was mounted by the St. Louis Artists' Guild at their new location at the corner of Forsyth and Jackson in Clayton, MO, a suburb of St. Louis. The show ws an all-media juried exhibition seeking work that uses elements of art: line, shape, form, space, texture, value, and/or color as a main component of the final product.
Juror Claire Ashley is an artist who also works as a Professor in Contemporary Practices, Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. Her work inhabits the liminal space between painting, sculture, slapstick humor, and pop art to transform mundane industrial materials into inflatable painted sculptures and performative props.
She is interested in the assumptions and history of both painting and sculpture. She creates objects that engage in intellectual play, testing the boundaries and expectations of each medium, while exploring the possibilities of lowbrow, mundane, unconventional materials. She is interested in how objects "look" as opposed to "how" they are created i.e. the appearance of abstract painting visualized through industrial materials and sculptural form. She combines expressive painting in opposition to the lineraity and the rigidity of adhesive tape and vinyl stencils.
Ashley was recently profiled by Laura M. Mettam in Chicago Gallery News (December 2015), "Claire Ashley: The Evolution of Surprise"
Text mainly drawn from Elements of Abstraction exhibit prospectus.