Still Life With Woodpecker

HALSEY MCKAY is pleased to present, Still Life With Woodpecker, an interdisciplinary group show. Taking its name from the 1980 Novel by Tom Robbins, the exhibition looks beyond traditional definitions of still life to see how the presentation of objects can perform as narrative, index, ornament, illusion and abstraction sometimes simultaneously. Irreverant and poetic, the group finds new meanings and interpretations in the specific and ordinary.

 Appropriately titled “Hurry Up! I’m Dreaming,” Ugo Rondinone’s bronze birdbath sets a fantastical tone between the actual and the other that pervades the exhibition. Ryan Steadman’s paintings of found books double as trompe l’oeil objects yet his attention to each ripple and tear of tattered dust jackets lends itself to painterly concerns that these abstract compostions take shape as. Similarly Paul Gagner’s renderings of abstract paintings in the studio are both calculated realism and flattened abstraction. His paintings of signs act as the things themselves – “For Sale by Owner” advertises itself, the painting, for sale, by the artist. Torey Thornton’s still life of a milky glass, hat and orange that appear resting on a wooden shelf, is physically painted on slat wood panels with a moulding shelf. These combinations of image, object and material lead us somewhere between two and three dimesions.

Artist: Sarah Dornner, Paul Gagner, Ugo Rondinone, David B. Smith, Ryan Steadman, Torey Thornton, Lisa Williamson, Kevin Zucker