The Whole Gallery
405 W. Franklin St.
3rd Floor
Baltimore, MD 21201
seth.adelsberger@yahoo.com
For Immediate Release
I See the Face! I See the Light! 2!
April 7th - May 5th
Matt Lock
Nicola Knight
Maki Maruyama
Edward Fendley
D'Metrius Rice
Seth Adelsberger
Noel Feibert
Molly O'Connell
Aliaz Diaz
Brent Wadden
Jimmy Joe Roche
At some point in our lives, we have all recognized a face in the clouds, seen a MagicEye poster, or found Waldo. Although immediately gratifying, this kind of resolution often discourages further investigation into abstraction's more layered meanings. I see the face! I see the Light! is a group exhibition of young, emerging artists at the Whole Gallery, located in downtown Baltimore, MD. Whether working with drawings, paper cutouts, or wall painting, this group of artists all use heads or faces as central devices in their work. Each face manifests as both immediately recognizable and submerged in abstraction. The face motif serves as a familiar entry point into puzzling compositions that bridge genres and challenge perception. From psychedelic visions to formal investigations, the range of work in this show combines technique with irreverance, favoring suggestion over the absolute. Ultimately, “seeing the light” is less a direct path dictated by the artist, and more a doorway to infinite possibility and reflection.
Matt Lock makes music and draws every single day in Massachusetts. Recent exhibits include Sleepover Psychedelia at Kapok Gallery Space (Hong Kong), Maximum Warriors at No Space (Seattle), and Maximum Warriors PDX at Yes (Portland). Influenced by fantasy novel bookcovers, Matt’s drawings combine darkly comic RPG scenarios with high school notebook acid flashbacks.
Nicola Knight was born in London, England and attended the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington DC. Nicola’s most recent body of work places striated, zombie like figures and heads in ominous, baroque landscapes. Ribbons of vibrant color flow through the subjects, weaving sinewous lines into worlds of psychological tension. Her work was last featured in Arbitrary Specifics at Subbasement Gallery (Baltimore). Nicola has an upcoming solo show at School 33 (Baltimore, 2007).
Maki Maruyama was born in Tokyo, Japan. Graduating from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 2005, Maki has shown his work in Little Creatures at Transformer (DC) and Whippersnapper at Conner Contemporary Art (DC). Maki’s paintings use deformed bodiless heads to form open narratives that build on the artist’s exposure to both American and Japanese pop culture.
Edward Fendley is a DC based artist who received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Ed constructs images based upon a personal vocabulary of lines and shapes. His work is never finished and serves as a therapeutic struggle for understanding. Color is used intuitively, as each painting exists in a state constant progression.
D’Metrius Rice graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2004 and is now living and working in Baltimore. His paintings are hybrid compositions that combine shifting space with graphic events. Recent shows include Psychological Mask at the Basement Gallery (Knoxville, TN) and Remastered at Studio One Eight Gallery (DC).
Seth Adelsberger currently lives and works in Baltimore. Graduating from Towson University (MD) in 2002, Seth has had recent solo shows at Sara Nightingale Gallery (Watermill, NY), Flashpoint (DC), Current Gallery(Baltimore), and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art (Wilmington). In his latest work, Seth has been producing large, cut paper installations that form multiple facial readings based on a symmetrical layout. Fractal noise fields and day glo anatomies are layered to form dense networks.
Jimmy Joe Roche appropriates elements of pop culture and transforms them into new cult mythologies. He recently collaborated with composer Dan Deacon to produce Ultimate Reality, an audiovisual supernova of neon psychedelia, made entirely from the films of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Jimmy has recently also been producing a number of collages, drawings, and paper cutouts.
Brent Wadden, a graduate of NSCAD, currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany. His paintings and drawings are geometric and graphic. Wadden uses design, fields of intense colour, and symbol to construct elements that play on the narrative, yet shift in plane and relationship.
Alia Diaz
Noel Freibert
Molly O'Connell
Ola Vasiljeva
