Joseph Ayers New Work
January 17 - February 16, 2008
Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present the first exhibition of painting, drawing, and installation by New York-based artist and recent Hunter College MFA graduate, Joseph Ayers.
Ayers' work centers on the visual and conceptual interrelationship between human consciousness and forces of nature. Objects, natural elements, drawing, painting, and various combinations of each comprise his illusionistic forms in ways that often question the disparities and similarities between his media and his ostensible subjects. His work exploits ways in which culturally formed expectations affect perceptions.
Ayers' installation Running Out of Choices includes two sculpted birch tree stumps placed in the furthest corner of the room. A trompe l'oeil painted birch panel leans on the corner as if reflecting the verso of the tree stumps. The viewer initially interprets the connection between the two through the trompe l'oeil effect. Once that effect evaporates, the viewer connects the two forms through their shared source material. The balance of this work relies on a tension between the real and the illusion of the real, where nature and art coalesce.
The Only Difference Between a Duck and a Dick is 'U' and 'I' depicts a larger-than-life-size human figure with a duck-like head standing in a darkened room. The figure's hands appear to clutch an actual axe lodged into a carved tree stump positioned directly in front of the painting. The psychological space in this work is both confined and ominous as the figure attempts to liberate itself through an act of annihilation of its own kind.
Other works, such as the drawing Sand Shark, further perpetuate Ayers' approach to connecting outwardly dissimilar life forms. Composed on two adjacent six foot sheets, the diptych renders two life-size sharks standing vertically and erect, nose to dorsal, back to back. The perception of this imagery becomes upended when close inspection reveals that the mark making involved is actually a series of thousands of overlaid rubber-stamped images of an evergreen tree. The image of the tree itself, drawn to be compellingly strong and full, punctuates the interdependent relationship of these two seemingly unrelated organisms.
Ultimately, Joseph Ayers' work occupies the psychological space between the conceptual and the surreal. His images pose confrontational questions about the natural world and its interaction with human presence. Illusion and abstraction often intersect and collide in Ayers' beguiling and hauntingly beautiful images.