SPRING/BREAK Art Show Information:

Collector's / Press Previews: Wednesday, September 7th, 11am - 5pm

VIP Opening Night: Wednesday, September 7th, 5pm - 8pm

Regular Show Days: Thursday, September 8th - Monday, September 12th, 11am - 8pm

Location: Atlantic Production Center, 625 Madison Avenue — Booth 1118

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(NEW YORK) We are pleased to announce Contemporary Vignettes, a curated room for the SPRING/BREAK Art Show. Nine works of art — including an elaborate floral, fiber, and found-object installation — will be exhibited at the fair’s 10th anniversary edition. Our two-person show will include self-portraits by the photography mixed-media artist Rebecca Marimutu, and still-life works by the painting-installation artist Tracy Morgan, and will explore the ways in which self-portraiture and floral still-life are reborn and revitalized as vessels for storytelling today. In keeping with the fair’s “NAKED LUNCH”, a neo-Renaissance theme, this exhibition derives inspiration from Sandro Botticelli’s 15th c. masterpiece, Primavera. As a whole, Contemporary Vignettes invites viewers to contemplate the individualized stories of each work woven into larger narratives —of race, activism, and community—and challenges them to discover the deeper meanings hidden in plain sight or purposefully concealed.

Contemporary Vignettes is inspired by Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera (c.1482), from its attention to incorporate a plethora of floral detail, to its enigmatic and vignette-oriented storytelling. In Primavera, the mythological figures do not depict a continuous narrative of a sole famous myth, but rather each is a single vignette from a different story, bonded only by the lush spring backdrop containing over one-hundred recognizable flora. Similarly, Contemporary Vignettes prominently features each artwork as stand-alone statements, yet binds them thematically with a floral, textured paper backdrop created by Tracy Morgan. The exhibition title also references how both artists' artworks are heavily informed by contemporary issues, and also utilize vignette storytelling techniques to capture a sole moment, detail, or concept.

Rebecca Marimutu’s hybrid collage-photography explores themes of self, identity, and material tactility through self-portraiture. Using both digital and analogue photographs, the artist cuts, rips, tapes, glues, and paints over her works, all to conceal, obscure, and protect that which lies within the frame —herself. Her practice is informed by her research into Critical Race Theory, as well as with contemporary views of the sculptural nature of photography. For Marimutu, as an Indo-Guyanese African American woman, each work is an examination of her inner-self, documenting a moment, discovery, or realization that she cautiously cloaks from the viewer.

Portrait Adhered IMG No. 28 depicts a tightly-cropped front-facing image of the artist in full color. With her lips ajar and eyelids heavy, we seem to catch her in a moment just before slumber. Speckled atop the portrait are ink-blotted windows to another grayscale portrait with her left eye wide-open confronting our gaze, along with a superimposed tertiary color image of her face slightly tilted to her left, her right eye open and positioned in the main image’s traditional third-eye location. Here the artist seems to suggest an altered consciousness of dreams or spirituality, and alludes to deeper connections within our minds.

In Portrait Adhered IMG No. 69, Marimutu’s eyes stare intensely outward as the right side of her face is cloaked in shadow. Her brow is furrowed and her head is slightly tilted to her right, indicating frustration. Strangely, her mouth has been replaced by the closed lips of another person, as if to show she has been silenced or misrepresented. Placed behind her face and taped neatly into the background, we see an image of a brick wall with tall, weed-like plants growing in front of it, perhaps alluding to the time that has passed since her voice was silenced.

The strength of Rebecca Marimutu’s work is her skill of layering multiple portrait images and her manipulated facial features to subtly suggest what she is thinking or feeling.

Tracy Morgan creates colorful, expressive, floral paintings and bespoke installations inspired by her elaborate still-lifes, constructed from flowers, plant-life, and brightly colored or patterned objects she finds in her neighborhood or on her travels. Her flowers function as “actors” on her canvas, providing her with a vehicle to paint a variety of complex thoughts and emotions hidden in plain sight. Part conceptual, Morgan’s work comments on the multitude of tumultuous current events that are grounded in her activist spirit; some deeply personal — including queer and woman’s rights —- others empathetic towards her Brooklyn community, civil rights, and the environment. For Morgan, each painting and installation is an invitation to explore her inner thoughts all organized into unassuming bouquets.

In Untitled (Dark canvas with flowers) bright-hued blooms radiate upward and outward, grounded in a dark composition. Here Morgan incorporated a variety of different summer flowers, each in various states of abstraction from painterly to implied (as they appear as patches of color). Every area or vignette of the canvas represents a separate thought, feeling, or experience as the artist navigated through a difficult period in her life. At the bottom right of the canvas, a lavender colored dahlia is bent mid-stem, drooping downwards, slowly releasing its petals, this recalls how a close friend slowly died from terminal cancer.

Morgan’s installation, The Boom, and booth design further immerses us into a Primavera-mindset. Her installation totem incorporates found-objects, live and dried flower bouquets, and hand-knit sessile vases tucked into niches. As a whole, this conceptual artwork is a larger commentary on the ephemeral and fragile nature of housing in historic neighborhoods like Greenpoint in New York City. Additionally, the walls and floor were crafted by the artist to emphasize the theme. The wallpaper panels of a zoomed-in image of painted flowers highlighting the woven linen (from her large painting) are a reference to both the numerous flora found in Botticelli’s work, as well as to the theory that his painting was inspired by Renaissance tapestries, which were typically woven by unknown women artists.

The strength of Tracy Morgan’s work is the deep empathy and thought she incorporates into every detail of her work from color choice, to upcycling objects, to placement on canvas.

When viewed together, and in the context of NAKED LUNCH, the artworks in Contemporary Vignettes encourage conversations of larger, more inclusive themes in the art historical canon, while pushing the boundaries of two classic genres —self-portraiture and still-life— into the 21st century with a nod to a 15th century masterpiece.

Contemporary Vignettes is curated by Ashley Ouderkirk, and will be on view in Booth 1118 at 625 Madison Avenue in New York City from September 8th to 12th. On September 7th, a Press + Collector Preview will be held from 11am to 5pm, followed by a VIP Opening Night reception from 5pm to 8pm.

For further information or press inquiries, please contact Ashley Ouderkirk at AshleyLOuderkirk@gmail.com.

PRESS RELEASE: Contemporary Vignettes at SPRING/BREAK Art Fair in Booth 1118

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