Ginny Casey
Trap Door
May 11 – June 22, 2019
Nino Mier Gallery is pleased to present Ginny Casey’s second solo exhibition with the gallery opening Saturday, May 11th at 7313 Santa Monica Avenue in West Hollywood, and on view through June 22nd. An opening reception will be held on May 11th from 6:00 – 8:00 pm.
Ginny Casey’s new paintings feature decrepit interiors full of objects like chisels, woodcutters, pulleys and in-process sculptures. In Casey’s theatre of the absurd, these objects are distorted, engorged and disproportioned where the restrictions of logic and time are abandoned to the surreal.
For Casey, the concept of space is subjective, each painting challenges the notion of linear space as a way to provoke preconceived perceptions. Multiple trap doors, staircases that lead to nowhere, and ladders that extend to windows into the abyss all contribute to a spatial disorientation.
The paintings encourage open interpretation. For Casey, “It’s like trying to see in the dark… it’s all intuitive.” Starting from drawings of individual objects, Casey redraws and collages these together, building relationships, narratives, and tension into what becomes the finished composition. Her paintings do not begin with preconceived notions of a finished product; rather, a story develops, emerging from her subconscious. Casey draws upon psychoanalysis, free-association, dreams and the unconscious to make her paintings.
Casey, a new mother, has found imagery that evokes fertility and motherhood recurring in her work. Vessels of varying shapes and use recur often. In Stunted Developments one such vessel is stuck in a wooden table, half birthed, a cracked egg rests in a spoon atop an adjacent table, while a blue vessel and sculpting materials are additional actors in this drama. Allusions to motherhood are omnipresent.
The unsettling dissonance in scale and perspective animates her objects and lets them fall, float, and rest in a state of tension and interrelation that adds to the mystery and intrigue of the artist’s narratives. Behind the Curtain hints at the inherent mystery within the painting.
The overwhelming sense of oddity is furthered by the artist’s process; using only a dry brush, Casey applies thin layers over an absorbent gessoed surface. The layering creates a mottled patchwork to the surface that induces movement in the individual colors.
Casey’s objects are usually in a state of transition, where furniture is being broken, fixed or carried. In Heavy Load/Broken Legs the front legs of a coral colored chair have buckled from the pressure of a wrapped bundle tied with string and rather than crumble, the weight has caused the chair to collapse into a defeated kneeling position. A similar metaphorical weight is felt in Escape Plan (Attic Door), where a bronze Atlas-like sculpture is bent over carrying an empty vessel, the body of the earth seemingly missing. Frozen moments, interruptions, and half states are frequent in Casey’s paintings.
Ginny Casey was born in Niskayuna, NY (1981). Casey received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Casey has had recent solo exhibitions at Half Gallery, New York (2018), Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles (2017), and a two-person exhibition with Jessi Reaves at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2017). Recent group exhibitions include “Early 21st Century Art,” Almine Rech Gallery, London (2018), “SEED,” Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York (2018), “Cliché,” Almine Rech Gallery, New York (2018), and “Sitting Still,” Bravin Lee Programs, New York (2017). The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.