Strangely Familiar

Strangely Familiar

Strangely Familiar

Organized by: Meaghan Kent
Artists: Maureen Cavanaugh, Carolyn Salas, Gabriela Salazar, and Lumin Wakoa
Exhibition: September 6 – October 20, 2018
Opening Reception at Cody Gallery: September 6, 6-8pm

Cody Gallery is pleased to present “Strangely Familiar” with work by New York-based artists Carolyn Salas, Gabriela Salazar, Lumin Wakoa, and Maureen Cavanaugh. The exhibition of individual works range from the representational to the abstract through painting, sculpture, and collage. In each artist’s practice there is an element of re-vision—and re-examination—of an already known.

The four artists initially presented their work as a collective in “Here Now,” a section of Spring Break Art Fair curated by Adam Parker Smith. Maureen Cavanagh’s multi-stage objects and paintings play with the primacy of source, reworking an image between mediums of the digital and analog, the work shifts between memory to fantasy. Carolyn Salas’ mimetic forms are seemingly made in one material but cast in another; they allude to improvisational processes of collage while slowly revealing a layered making, and hover between the architectural and the body that architecture serves. Gabriela Salazar’s railings and poles, covered in plasticine and held precariously by ceramic brackets and metal hooks, upend our assumptions of the form as an object for support and stability for the body; in the tension between wanting to hold and fear of disruption, expectations of support more generally are left in question. Lumin Wakoa’s densely composed and scrambled surfaces reveal hints of another narrative beneath the one visible to us; her works are populated with a collection of personal and universal talismans including bones, flowers, water, and wings, which float liminally in the layers of paint, both within and out of reach.

Maureen Cavanaugh, a Nebraska native and Brooklyn-based artist, studied painting in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Exhibitions include: “PaintersNYC”, Páramo, Guadalajara and Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños (MUPO), Oaxaca, Mexico, “Sister Garage Project,” Los Angeles, California, “Everything Must Go,” Casey Kaplan, New York, New York, “Talk Show,” Edward Thorp New York, New York, and “Contemporary Painting,” Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine (curated by Alex Katz). Her work is part of the permanent collections at the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, California.

Carolyn Salas earned a BFA in sculpture from the College of Santa Fe, NM and an MFA from Hunter College, NY. Salas has attended a number of residency programs, including, the Abrons Art Center A.I.R. Space Program, The NARS Foundation, Blue Mountain Center, New York, NY; the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT, Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, NM; and was a Chashama Studio Space recipient, and received an Elizabeth Foundation Studio Program/Space award. Recent exhibitions include, “Full Body” at Mrs. Gallery, NY, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, NY, Koenig & Clinton, NY, Brookfield Arts, NY, Terrault Contemporary and Towson University in Baltimore, MD, Páramo, Guadalajara, México, and Parisian Laundry, Montreal, Canada.  This will be the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery. Salas lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Gabriela Salazar was born in New York City, to architects from Puerto Rico. Solo exhibitions include: “My Lands are Islands,” NURTUREart, Brooklyn, “In Advance of a Storm (for Luis and Antonia) (for A and L) (for parents) (for two),” The Lighthouse Works’ Fellowship in Public Art, “For Closure” (Outdoors, the Bronx), Bronx River Art Center, and, most recently, “Eye of Palm,” Efrain Lopez Gallery, Chicago. Her work has appeared in The New York TimesThe New Yorkerhyperallergic, and The Brooklyn Rail. Salazar has been in residence or fellowship at Workspace, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Abrons Art Center, and Open Sessions at The Drawing Center, NYC. Currently, she also has work in “Indicators: Artists on Climate Change” at the Storm King Arts Center, NY, “The Queens International: Volumes” at the Queens Museum, NY, and “Isla: Regarding Paradise” at Center for the Arts Gallery, Towson University, MD. She holds an MFA from RISD, a BA from Yale University, and lives, works, and teaches in NYC.

Lumin Wakoa received her BFA from the University of Florida and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has had recent solo and two person exhibitions at Deanna Evans Projects, Present Company Gallery, Providence College, and Reynolds Gallery. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Taymour Grahne Gallery, NY, Untitled Art Fair (Present Company booth), Lu Magnus, NY, Classic Six Gallery, Sweatshop Studios, ACNY, and Field Projects, NY among other venues. She was selected for the 2010/11 VCUarts Fountainhead Arts Fellowship and received an MFA fellowship from the Dedalus Foundation in 2010. She will be participating in a year-long residency at the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program fall 2018.

Cody Gallery of Marymount University is located at 1000 North Glebe Road, 2nd Floor. Street parking and Capital Bikeshare are available. The gallery is located near the Metroline Orange: Ballston-MU. Email mkent@marymount.edu or phone (703) 908-7782 for further information.

Strangely Familiar

Strangely Familiar

Exhibition view photo credit: Joseph Hicks