Bilingual: Abstract & Figurative
Group Exhibition
Bruno David Gallery presents "Bilingual: Abstract & Figurative" a group exhibition of abstract and figurative artworks selected in order to showcase parallel theoretical and philosophical concerns. View images of the artworks on ARTSY
Artists include Ricky Allman, Barry Anderson, Sara Ghazi Asadollahi, Laura Beard, Heather Bennett, Peter Bolte, Larissa Borteh, Ben Brough, Lisa Bulawsky, Bunny Burson, Michael Byron, Monica Carrier, Joseph Canizales, Judy Child, Patricia Clark, Carmon Colangelo, William Conger, Terry Conrad, Alex Couwenberg, Connor Dolan, Jill Downen, Yvette Drury Dubinsky, Ryan Eckert, Ryan Erickson, Damon Freed, Douglass Freed, Haleigh Givens, Adrian Gonzalez, Lily Hollinden, Richard Hull, Kelley Johnson, Chris Kahler, Leslie Laskey, Van McElwee, Renee McGinnnis, Justin Henry Miller, William Morris, Laura Mosquera, James Austin Murray, Arny Nadler, Ralph Nagel, Patricia Olynyk, Yvonne Osei, Gary Passanise, Robert Pettus, Daniel Raedeke, Charles P. Reay, Tom Reed, Chris Rubin de la Borbolla, Frank Schwaiger, Charles Schwall, Rosalyn Schwartz, Christina Shmigel, Thomas Sleet, Buzz Spector, Andrea Stanislav, Emilie Stark-Menneg, Cindy Tower, Mark Travers, Mario Trejo, Charles Turnell, and Bryant Worley.
Visual art is almost always a translation of impressions of the physical world, on a continuum that ranges from the most realistic of figurative practices through the most abstract or nonrepresentational modes. These two endpoints are often portrayed as being in opposition. Prior to the emergence of abstract art, the illusion of visible reality had been at the core of art making practices, with artists getting ever more accurate in depicting real things--or people--in real spaces and & until modernist abstraction presented a drastic departure from realistic depictions of the physical world. Logic of perspective was replaced with a visual language of shape, form, color, and line to create compositions that could exist independently from existing things in the real world. Just as the history of figurative art was often discussed in linguistic terms, like the "vocabulary" of a painter or the "syntax" of a sculptor, so did abstraction offer symbols suitable for description as a "language."
The conventional art historical narrative of Modern Art presents a story of a contentious shift from figuration into non-objective abstract art, creating a gap between the two. Only in the later part of the 20th century would this intellectual wound separating abstraction and figuration begin to mend, as artists emerged that embraced both. Today we can appreciate how the historical conflicts between the languages of figuration and abstraction ultimately enabled artists of the present moment to be "bilingual" in abstraction and figuration.
Bruno David Gallery is proud of its more than three decades of programing of presenting artists from all along this spectrum, selecting artists who have explored these theories and philosophies within their own art making practices, and those who push past the boundaries and blur the lines between abstraction and figuration.
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