As artists continue
to survey their environments for subjects, they digest and reinterpret people,
places, and things in contemporary life into inventive images via innovative
practices. (Re)presentation pays homage to the Realist art
movement yet elevates a variety of art making practices, including, but not
limited to, assemblage, portraiture, appropriation, or even photorealism and
photo montages. Pushing beyond the long standing tradition of representational
art, the works in (Re)presentation bridge multiple disciplines and often
include staged scenes or unconventional materials. Many of these works resist
the notion of having any explicit narrative or message, leaving them largely
open to interpretation.
Printmaker and
sculptor Nicola López, for example, pushes the boundaries of printmaking and
installation art to explore architecture as a metaphor for the human
experience. In Big Windows : Skin : Portals, she constructs a
cityscape with metal supports and woodblock prints, mimicking and exposing the
force and fragility of architectural ambition. Big Windows
: Skin : Portals was born out of her
participation in the Project Atrium series for which she created A
Gentle Defiance of Gravity and Form in 2016.
Other artists in (Re)presentation include Jim Dine, Ethan
Murrow, Philip Guston, Jason John, Gordon Matta-Clark, Claes Oldenberg, Kevin
Peterson, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Alison Rossiter, and Joni
Sternbach, among others.