Kirsten Deirup, Jonathan Herder, and Johan Nobell at Pierogi

Kirsten DEIRUP, Jonathan HERDER, and Johan NOBELL
Scape-ism
Gallery 2
11 Sept – 11 Oct, 2015
Opening Reception: Fri, 11 Sept. 7–9pm

Press Release
Scape-ism

We are pleased to present a three-person exhibition of paintings and works on paper in Gallery 2. Works by each of these artists seem to be simultaneously verging on or diverging from landscape. What Tan Lin writes about Johan Nobell’s paintings could apply equally to Kirsten Deirup and Jonathan Herder’s works. “Nobell’s paintings aren’t really landscapes in any realistic sense of the word. But they do inhabit or haunt a space that is vestigially connected to the high falutin’ language of the romantic sublime, the panoramic vistas of Cole or the luminist landscapes of Martin Joseph Heade. As a phylum of the American landscape sensibility, [his] canvasses owe something to Jim Shaw’s thrift store politics, H.C. Westermann’s take on America… and the ‘impure’ political painting that Philip Guston undertook after turning his back on abstraction….” (Tan Lin)

Kirsten Deirup’s paintings depict suggestive but inexplicable narratives, created via multi-layered, trompe l’oeil effects of shadows, and multiple perspectives and vistas. Her paintings and works on paper have been exhibited widely in the US and her work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (NY, NY). She received a B.F.A. from Cooper Union School of Art (NY, NY) and currently works and lives in New York State.

Jonathan Herder collages fragments of found stamps and photographs, gathered from multiples sources, to create composite imagined landscapes and panoramas with implied narratives. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (NY, NY). He received a B.A. from the State University of New York (Purchase, NY), studied at the School of Visual Arts (NY, NY), and received his M.F.A. from Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA). He currently works and lives in New York State.

“…[M]any of [Johan] Nobell’s works communicate obliquely with an imagery that suggests not so much the realm of nature but rather a pre-historic language that is at once visual and verbal, a fairy tale minus its human actors.” (Tan Lin) Johan Nobell works and lives in Stockholm, Sweden. His paintings have been exhibited widely in Europe and elsewhere.