Blank Canvas Opening

Jun 25, 2015

Blank Canvas Opening

Jun 25, 2015

“My father did not [...] buy us coloring books because ‘you will condition them to draw within someone else’s lines.’ Instead, we only got blank paper. Blank canvas - to craft our own work, our own ideas.” -Ben Zweibelson

FELLINI Gallery proudly presents “BLANK CANVAS,” a group exhibition featuring acclaimed international artists Jose Gonzalo Medellin Herrera, Lena Kami, Desi Civera, Mark Ashton Vey, Yohei Iketani, Silvia Paci and Shingo Ishida.

Given a blank material, artists face both its physicality as well as the specific clichés that it embodies: from stock gestures to routine ways of seeing. Reaching beyond its rawness, and beyond our automatic responses to it, an artistic vision must stage an encounter torn between presence and abstraction.

“BLANK CANVAS” assembles a spectrum of inquiries. Jose Gonzalo Medellin Herrera casts fantasy onto the human form through contours enmeshed in wire and shadow. Mark Ashton Vey depicts idyllic wanderings through imaginary landscapes. Lena Kami employs color as an aspect of 3-dimensional space. The portraits of Desi Civera touch on the proximity between familiarity and estrangement. Yohei Iketani ties together specific occasions with fleeting memories, while Silvia Paci and Shingo Ishida embrace portraiture as both documentation and fictional story-telling.