GINNY CASEY
Built from Broke
June 10–July 14, 2017
MIER GALLERY is pleased to present Built from Broke, Ginny Casey’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will open on Saturday, June 10, 2017 at 1107 Greenacre Avenue in West Hollywood, and will be on view through July 14, 2017. An opening reception will be held on June 10 from 6:00pm – 8:00pm.
Casey depicts tools of a ceramicist as well as isolated domestic objects in an intimate proximity. The unsettling dissonance in scale and perspective animates her objects and lets them fall, float, and rest in a state of tension and interrelation.
Casey’s paint handling is soft yet with a rough texture. The diffused light in her paintings is enhanced by the choice of color and the application of multiple layers of paint. By applying a dry brush technique colors can peak through, creating an inner light and subtle nuances in tonality.
The tightly cropped pictorial space in Blank Tape is a grand example of how Casey plays with composition and off-kilter scale. Her objects are pushed to the forefront of the picture plane and yet the spatiality of the room is ever present. The abrupt snap of a measuring tape feels about to happen. The table almost fills the space but does not feel sturdy on two precious, unsettling legs.
In Couch and Carving the sculpted object is being transformed from one shape into another by the act of destroying or chipping away and stands in contrast to the calm contemplative resting place of the red couch. Tools for making and breaking are corresponding and in constant stimulation.
These surreal still-life scenes can be read as narrative tableaux and metaphors for personal transformations. The cutting of the guitar strings, the loss of something beautiful, which always accompanies transformation and creation; the deconstruction of a clock in Adjusting Time, the missing calibrated lines in Blank Tape are all symbols for emotional cuts; the breaking with something familiar.
GINNY CASEY (b. 1981, Niskayuna, New York; lives New York) received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Half Gallery and 106 Green, New York and MIER Gallery, Los Angeles. Recently she opened a two-person show at the ICA in Philadelphia and was included in group shows at DC Moore Gallery, New York; Romeo, New York; and Radical Abacus, Santa Fe, New Mexico.