Latitudes
featuring works by Peter Downsbrough, Bronlyn Jones, Julian Opie, and Richard Serra

January 6, 2018 - February 10, 2018

The noun, “latitude”, has four definitions: one based in each astronomy, geography and photography and one meaning the freedom from narrow restrictions.  All four meanings engage the issues of relationship and contingency.  The four artists in this show also engage issues of comparison and contingency.

Richard Serra’s 1972 “Circuit” is the artist’s first print and clearly lays out Serra’s ability to work both within two dimensions and the print medium.  The image in the work illustrates a sculptural installation and yet “Circuit” stands as a work in of itself.  Serra used form, medium and transparent layers to get at the geometric, volumetric and graphic power of his idea.

Julian Opie’s new series of “Cornish Coasts” consists of six individual works, each a wall-mounted object consisting of a digital print on paper, face-mounted to plexiglas and then back-mounted to white acrylic.  The imagery, as is often the case for Opie, is simplified forms that balance between the hyper-specific locations (as announced in the individual works’ titles) and the generalized forms to which he reduces the landscapes’ images.  Important to recognize, as well, is Opie’s dedication, not just to imagery, but to material and thus the physicality of the “Cornish Coasts” (that of digital images sandwiched between acrylic, mounted to the wall with no additional framing) serves to situate these images of coastal oasis in the here and now.

Bronlyn Jones’ works - from 2014 to the present, consist of found and sourced papers that serve to balance between two and three dimensions (graphic nature versus physically collaged thick papers), fully encapsulated formalism versus referentiality (geometric elements versus remnants of cultural detritus [mostly newsprint]), and bold versus meditative presentations (subtle manipulations of the surfaces, proportions and juxtapositions).  Presented as a mini-survey within the group exhibition, the six works display the breadth of possibility for delicate and powerful meditations on and with paper.

Peter Downsbrough’s three works also evince the artist’s breadth of exploration.  The largest of the pieces, taken by the Brussels-based artist on a trip to Boston in 2006, demonstrates on a large scale both a respect for modernist ideals of balance and geometry, yet presenting the reality of the reflective, reflexive and responding world within which we live.  To further elucidate the ideas presented in the large photograph, the specifically-matted and framed photograph from 1978 utilizes the imagery, matting and framing to create a spatial experience that is as much about the photo in space as it is the space in the photo.  Lastly, the brand new “THE THEN” from 2018, is a small-scale multiple (edition of 15, being sold for $350) that utilizes photography, line and text to create a multi-faceted approach to examining space in time and time as space.

Latitudes, as an exhibition, hopes to present, both within and between the artists’ works, opportunities for dynamic interaction and perpetual stimulation.