One Someone Anyone, at Galleri Urbane

Opening reception July 5th 7-9 pm

Galleri Urbane / Marfa announces a new exhibit, “One Someone Anyone” by Bret Aaker, Alyson Fox, John Mulvany, and Morgan Sorne.

“My last two summer shows were photography shows centered around portraiture – self portraits as well as photos of anonymous people, eccentrics, or simply people in precarious situations,” says Galleri Urbane owner Ree Willeford. “These paintings call a similar kind of attention to the strangeness of the human condition, to the inherent diversity and to the perennial sense of loneliness and anonymity.” Of course, each artist has a distinct style and technique.

The show includes seven drawings by Austin artist Alyson Fox. For her canvases, the artist used found book covers. The images are delicate and transfixing family sagas featuring nameless and faceless characters. “My drawings are an ongoing series of one made up little family with half true narratives,” explains Fox. “I work from my own relationships and frustrations to develop the stories. The main themes in the work are sexual angst, gender roles, the play between objects and humans, violence and curiosity.”

Fox uses ink, colored pencil and watercolors to create her simplified human forms, which are drawn in contour with blank faces. An abundance of vacant space surrounds the images; allowing the viewer to conceptually fill in the story and choose their own endings, particularly ones that entail an ominous portent of things to come.

John Mulvany’s oil and acrylic paintings are equally haunting. For example, in “Fall” (36x36 acrylic/oil on canvas), two young boys are wielding rifles outside a suburban home. They are wearing black suits and appear to be standing; yet their pants descend into a whirl of black, emanating from the earth. Suddenly the boys are no longer boys, but dark specters, surrounded by colors that are both fiery and autumnal.

“In 1996, I visited Mexico for the first time. Having been born and raised in Ireland, Mexico was an amazingly exotic and alien place,” explains Mulvany, who now lives in Austin. “Then I began to see parallels between Mexican art and culture and Irish Celtic culture; the mixture of Catholicism and pagan indigenous cultures, the sense of a society coming to terms with its unique character and history after centuries of colonial and religious domination and particularly the enduring strength of folk art and literary mythology.”

After visiting Frida Khalo’s house in Mexico City, Mulvany was struck by her collection of Retablos, postcard-sized paintings, full of religious and mythological imagery, portraying miracles and saintly interventions in everyday life. “The images were painted in a manner which suggested they were revealed to the artist in a flash then fixed directly on the surface,” says Mulvany, whose work conveys a similar sense of immediacy and revelation while appearing remarkable reflective. “In my paintings I try to explore ideas of dogma, superstition and fundamentalism in religion and politics using images from the past, from Irish and American history, juxtaposed with contemporary suburban settings. For me they represent the constant intrusion of the past into our lives.”

Morgan Sorne also deals with history, ritual and tradition in his work. “One Someone Anyone” features ten of Sorne’s mixed media pieces, nine of which are life-size paintings of children dressed in wild colors and patterns. Some of the children carry knives and spears, and are wearing extravagant attire, such as ornate headdresses and hot pink tights featuring red hearts. He calls these children his moon kids, and there is certainly something otherworldly about them. But they, like all of the images in his work, also represent very human themes.

“My work currently deals with rituals, traditions, rites of passage, loss, and the spirit child,” explains Sorne, who finds many of characters and environments in books, then cuts them out in order to create intricately layered drawings and paintings. “This work represents a reconciliation with personal trials and tribulations from my childhood,” says Sorne. “It’s also about perceptions of innocence and how those perceptions shape and define one’s identity.” Despite the serious thematic aspects of the work, Sorne also captures the whimsical nature of the human experience.

Bret Aaker also calls attention to the unpredictable with his “Capricious Series,” a succession of rich paintings featuring images culled from a series of Francisco Goya etchings from 1799. Caprice means a sudden unexpected action or change of mind. The Goya series was entitled Los Caprichos. “These prints illustrated a Spanish society of vain, greedy, and impulsive people where reason had gone to sleep,” says Aacker. “He used allegorical and fantastic images to illustrate his commentary of what he observed. Explaining one of his etchings he wrote, ‘He who yesterday played the part of the bull today plays the bull fighter.’"

Aaker placed the images on a field of color, removing details and blotting out their faces. He rearranged the figures, creating new compositions. Large expanses of solid colors paired with fluid contours and animated figurines recall the work of Henri Matisse, yet the work is truly his own.

“The capricious whims of fate are awaiting every one of us who proceed through life,” says Aaker. “And it seems that humans are still behaving the way Goya saw them two centuries ago, violently struggling for wealth and power, cloaked in a thin cape of morality.” This series is a natural progression of Aakers work, much of which has been show in previous exhibitions at Galleri Urbane. Once again, he’s using simple direct lines and solid areas of color, however, now he’s purposefully synthesizing art history with contemporary aesthetics.

About the artists:
- Alyson Fox has a BA in photography from FSU, and an MFA from University of Colorado. She is a visual artists and clothing designer.
- John Mulvany was born and raised in Ireland. He currently lives and works in Austin, TX.
- Morgan Sorne was born and raised in Tallahassee, Florida. He moved to Austin in September of last year. Sorne graduated from Florida State University with a BFA in Studio Art. He is a musician, actor, visual artist, and writer.

- Bret Aaker was born in Vietnam in 1967. He received a BA from The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA, and is currently an art instructor at Amy Biehl High School in Albuquerque, NM.

The show begins July 5th through August 2008 .
Galleri Urbane is open daily Mon-Sat from 9-6 /Sundays 11-4 or by appointment.