Erin Langer

April 21, 2015, 8:59am

JD Banke’s Live Wire: Peasant Dreams at Glass Box Gallery

When I went to see JD Banke’s Peasant Dreams, the paintings were in the middle of a photo shoot. Lighting apparatuses and tripod stands loitered around Glass Box Gallery’s small, jigsawed-together spaces, the artwork’s real-life interrupting its day job of just hanging out. The photographers politely tried to move aside in a space with little room to move, but they didn’t need to; I liked it this way. The comingling of the utilitarian things with the art-things created the best possible space for hearing the most vocal part of Banke’s work—a persistent, self-assured pronouncement of being alive. — Erin Langner, Seattle contributor


JD Banke | Peasant Dreams, 2015, Glass Box Gallery. Photo credit: Tyler Coray.

Listed under: Review

February 16, 2015, 9:22am

Better than the Beyond: Bed Bath & Between at SOIL Gallery

When I think of a Bed Bath & Beyond store, all I can see are things: things lining the walls, filling the floor space, packed onto shelves, coating the store in all forms of home goods. The section filled with informercial gadgets is my favorite, for the way it makes real the items that seem particularly made up, giving the store a mildly utopic element: here, you can buy bizarre, useless things that are supposed to only live on TV. When Seattle artists Julie Alexander, Nicholas Nyland and Matthew Offenbacher announced they were curating a group show, called Bed Bath & Between, at Seattle’s SOIL Gallery, it was hard to know what to expect, given the store reference. And, what would be the outcome of changing the “beyond” into the “between?” - Erin Langner, Seattle contributor


Installation view, including work by Julie Alexander, Maria Britton, and Nicholas Nyland. Wallpapers by Julie Alexander, Nicholas Nyland and Matthew Offenbacher. Photo by Julie Alexander.

Listed under: Review

November 07, 2012, 8:36am

Anonymous Source: Anna Fidler’s Topographic Celebrities

It is difficult to decide whether Anna Fidler’s (NAP #61) new show Cherry Bomb references the firecracker definition or the “smokin’ hot lady” definition of the term. The Portland artist’s meticulously constructed acrylic, pencil and cutout paper portraits on view at Seattle’s Prole Drift gallery literally portray women as their subject matter—nostalgic pop musicians including Heart, Joan Jett, and Karen Carpenter.  Yet, a sinister tone resides within the figures’ construction, a highly textural technique that combines psychedelic blasts of color with dark, map-like details that abstract Fidler’s imagery beyond simple appropriation.

Listed under: Review, Seattle

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