Fugue

Miranda Fine Arts is proud to present “FUGUE”
Featuring - Theresa Chong, William Holton, Katherine Jackson, Jaanika Peerna, Suikang Zhao
Artist Reception: Saturday, April 12 6-8 PM
On view April 12 through May 23, 2008
Curated by Patricia Miranda and Patricia Spergel

FUGUE: a musical form in which a theme is first stated, then repeated and varied with accompanying contrapuntal lines. Drawing, Painting, Glass, Video. Featuring- Theresa Chong, William Holton, Katherine Jackson, Jaanika Peerna, Suikang Zhao

The five artists included in Fugue incorporate a wide variety of materials: from etched glass to video to graphite on rice paper. Are all linked by a meditative approach to their work as well as a fascination with language, text, rhythm and music. These artists create drawings, paintings, sculpture and video, using repeated marks and text as a way of delineating space while filtering the energy of their tactile and temporal experiences.

Suikang Zhao originally from China and now in NYC, creates multi-media works incorporating his passion for music, especially classical, with spoken word and images. Using languages such as English, Chinese, Hebrew, Latin and French, he explores themes of multiculturalism through overlapping lines of language, in video, paper and glass. Much like riding the subways in New York City and listening to the cacophony of different dialects; there is a wonderful energy and woven quality to the overlapping and interlocking sounds and images.

Theresa Chong, born in Korea and living in NYC, presents drawings that are also closely linked with musical experience and in particular ephemerality and a sense of repeated rhythm. Dots appear and disappear with a sense of time passing in these delicate works—much as individual musical notes flit in and out of space while listening to a piece. While fundamentally abstract, her work can evoke maps or musical notations, reflecting her past study of music. Chong is represented by Danese Gallery in NYC.

Jaanika Peerna, originally from Estonia and living in Cold Spring, NY, presents recent drawings and videos. Whether watching a drop of rain slide down (or up) a window pane or examining a pencil line drawn with graphite, Peerna’s works allows the viewer a contemplative experience. As the artist aptly describes it: “There is a breath, rhythm and tone underlying and overlooking all; something to hold onto, something to hum along with, something to get lost within, in order to come clear again and again.” A musical sensibility accompanies her works enhanced by actual music, often composed by her husband David Rothenberg, in her videos.

William Holton’s paintings vibrate and glow with a luminosity created through a buildup of repeated marks—echoing the approach of Chong, but with a very different result. Holton, originally from Knoxville, TN, and now in NYC, describes his recent pieces by saying: “The work ultimately exists on the precipice of a mysterious, liminal point of transition. The point where molecules of water as a vast collective suddenly know to fundamentally change from liquid to vapor; or when a flock of birds, swarm of bees, or network of neurons collectively begins to think as one.” The musical character of repetitive natural systems informs the complex structure in his work.

Katherine Jackson, of NYC, creates glass pieces by methodically etching tiny lines of text into panels of glass both backwards and forwards, rendering the actual words illegible, but creating a surface that hums with rhythmic pulses. The viewer is confronted with an interwoven intimate musical network, catching us dead center between our visual and verbal ways of experiencing the world. Both Jackson’s and Zhao’s work is essentially a meditation on language, and the multiple ways we “read” “hear” and “interpret” our multiple communication systems.

All of these artists’ works seem to sit on a precipice between senses, in a kind of visual, verbal and musical synesthesia. The use of translucent mediums such as glass, video, oil paint and rice paper means we are always looking “through” as well as “at.” Jackson says that “perhaps all that artists can provide are windows through which to look.” These artists offer us 5 unique and contemplative ways to see, hear and perceive.