Page 22 - The Noise November 2016

SLASH & BURN CHALLENGES PARADIGMS OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING AT FLAGSTAFF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY, OPENING NOVEMBER 4
Flagstaff — Curator Allison Klion announces Slash & Burn, an exhibition of works by seven artists investigating the expanded potential of landscape as a subject at Flagstaff Modern and Contemporary. An opening
reception will take place on Friday, Nov. 4, 6-9PM,
and the exhibition will be on view Friday through
Sunday, and by appointment through the month
of December.
Slash and burn agriculture is an ancient, and widely used, though controversial farming practice that involves clear cutting and then burning existing vegetation to provide a fertile base for new crops. Metaphorically it implies the rejection of existing standards to make room for new ideas. Klion draws on this metaphor to ask the Flagstaff community to question accepted modes of representation. Through diverse modes of working that are tactile, psychological, historical, sociological, anthropological, and formal, these artists re-evaluate the associated meanings of a landscape.
Using aerial images of Southwestern and
seaside landscapes, Ida Badal (San Diego, CA)
depicts beautifully chilling places, devoid of
people, desolate but under surveillance. Ryan
Chin (Brooklyn, NY) layers textural painting with
imagery as diverse as Southwest postcards and
Chinese restaurant art. Sally Warren’s (Dallas,
TX) smeared iPhone photographs of mundane,
roadside landscapes attempt to square the
landscape painting tradition and the monumental
views of the American West with the reality of her
passive experience of them. Similarly, Katherine
Kerr (New Haven, CT) documents a fleeting
memory of her residency in Saguache, Colo., with
a loosely rendered, ethereal oil snapshot. In his
first (and only) attempt grappling with Grand Canyon, Travis Iurato (Flagstaff, AZ) repurposes materials from an earlier project to evoke the rugged materiality and brutality of the canyon’s rocky landscape in monochromatic relief. Alex de Carli (Saguache, CO) creates tenuous, site-specific sculptures made of materials found on long walks, and presents their temporary existence in photographs. The back room of the gallery will be dedicated to a tiny jewel-like study of Grand Canyon that Lucy Kirkman Allen (Bavon, VA) made one frigid February morning on her honeymoon while her husband slept.
Allison Klion is one half of the curatorial duo New Age Drinks along with Travis Iurato. The pair’s recent projects include Drink Piece, an intervention into the impending Arizona water crisis, The Snake Gulch Project, a short-term, intensive rural residency program, and New Age Drinks Gallery in Jerome, AZ. For more information visit NewAgeDrinks.org and connect @NewAgeDrinks on Facebook
and Instagram.
Flagstaff Modern and Contemporary is an exhibition space operated by Northern Arizona University Painting Professor Franklin Willis located at 215 S. San Francisco Street in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona.
Travis Iurato, Flagstaff Trash Collage (above).
Driving Through Flagstaff in the Rain at Night (lower right).
Ryan Chin, Transience as truth without name (upper right).
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