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April Issue 2005
Gallery 80808/Vista Studios in Columbia, SC, Features Works by Janet Orselli & Matt Overend
Columbia installation artist Janet
Orselli and painter Matt Overend of Smoaks, SC, will show together
in Gallery 80808 at Vista Studios in Columbia, SC, from Apr. 8-20,
2005. The exhibition, Double O 80808, is organized by
if Art of Columbia, International Fine Art Services. "It's
our first public exhibition," said if ART owner Wim Roefs,
a native of The Netherlands. If ART will publish a small catalogue
for the show.
Janet Orselli
Janet Orselli (b. 1954) will show new works of art, especially small sculptural chairs with a conceptual and visual twist. She will also show individual works that have been part of her installations. Her artworks are mixed media constructions that mainly consist of aged, found objects including old chairs, metal appliances, roots, crutches, bird nests, bones, turtle shells, canes, and fabric.
"Very often a work begins with discovering objects or materials that have certain qualities," Orselli said. "I am drawn to the external evidence of an object's past life and the unknown experiences that have changed and individualized it. I want to acknowledge the significance of the object's past existence while at the same time create a new purpose or context for it separate from its original definition. Primarily I want to focus attention on the objects themselves in their direct, honest state along with the poetic connections I make between objects."
Matt Overend
Matt Overend (b. 1950) is a native of Las Vegas who grew up in Atlanta and has lived in Smoaks since 1981. He will show mostly new work along with a few older pieces. His oil paintings will include the field and road studies and studio still lifes he's known for. Next to tabletops with containers and cups and flowers, the still lifes will include vibrant, colorful studies of fruit. Overend will also show several non-representational paintings.
Though Overend's paintings are mostly of recognizable scenes and objects, they are not primarily about them. "My paintings are an exploration of the structural relationship between gesture, shape, and space through the manipulation of color and texture," Overend said. He borrows gestural ideas and shapes from life and turns them into abstract and formal elements. The edge of a book or table thus provides a line, while the edge of a bowl or cup provides an ellipse or arc. In Overend's approach, color is not simply a means to represent daily reality but a poetic device to arrive, in concert with gestural ideas, at a deeper, truer reality. "The paintings are about discovering a kind of dynamic balance, a feeling of completeness, however temporary, much as poetry does."
Overend hasn't had an exhibition in Columbia since his successful show at the former Morris Gallery in 1999. Last year, he had solo exhibitions in Hilton Head, Camden, Charleston, in SC, and Charlotte, NC. Overend in 1973 graduated as an aerospace engineer at Georgia Tech before studying art at Santa Barbara City College in California, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Yale University.
Much of Overend's work will be the colorful but understated paintings he built his reputation with, Roefs said. In addition to post-World War II painters from the West Coast such as Richard Diebenkorn, Overend sees as an important influence early 20th-century European Fauves such as Andre Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck. "Like the Fauves, Overend often uses vibrant, non-naturalistic colors," Roefs said. "But with Matt there's a restraint that allows his colors to be unusual yet at the same time believable as actually existing in nature or in his studio. He can make what seems unreal, real."
Orselli, who has an MFA from Clemson University, currently has an installation at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston. Next year, she'll have one at the Burroughs & Chapin Museum in Myrtle Beach, SC. Other recent solo shows include those at the Sumter Gallery of Art in 2003 and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2004. Orselli was included in this year's and 2001's South Carolina Triennial as well as last year's traveling exhibition South Carolina Birds: A Fine Art Exhibition.
Orselli has not had an exhibition of objects presented as individual works. "De facto that makes this her first sculpture exhibition," Roefs said. "But she doesn't like to be called a sculptor. She sees herself as an installation artist and is hesitant about presenting and selling her objects as individual pieces. Still, these pieces have great conceptual and aesthetic merit as stand-alone objects. In fact, I think it is in part the strength of her pieces individually that makes her installations so successful."
Gallery 80808/Vista Studios will be open Mon.-Fri., 4-7pm; Sat., 11am-5pm; Sun., 1-5pm and by appt. during this exhibition. The space is also often open during daytime business hours, providing additional access.
For further information check
our SC Institutional Gallery listings, contact Wim Roefs at 803/799-7170
or e-mail at (wroefs@sc.rr.com).
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