Pro∙ject: 

An Installation by Andrew Myers and James Brandon O’Shea

Curated by Kathryn Cellerini Moore

for Ash Creek Art Center's Gallery at Mameres

 

October 8- November 8, 2014

Reception:  Thursday, October 9th, 5:00 - 7:00 pm

 

 

For their first collaborative installation, Pro∙ject, James Brandon O’Shea and Andrew Myers encourage a new way to see and experience photography and drawing. 

 

To do this, O’Shea composed a range of images on to 35mm slides.  Myers’ projected the images onto paper at his home studio where he responded directly to O’Shea’s images by drawing over and into the projected imagery. Layering and juxtaposition became new and central themes throughout the process. In the gallery, the artists worked together to design a dynamic space where viewers inevitably become a part of the work. A calculated strategy emerged:  in order for the viewer to see the entirety of the work, he or she will need to walk to multiple vantage points. By doing so the projected slides will embrace his or her body, and their shadow will become a key component of the installation, complicating the theme of layering.  As the photographic imagery envelops the viewer, that image is no longer present on the walls, revealing the marks underneath.

 

Through different means, each artist has harnessed an emotional undercurrent in the viewer which transports him or her into another realm.  O’Shea typically works alone and with small-scale, intimate photographs of fissures, cracks, weathered structures and momentary landscapes.  His clever compositions and muted palette provoke the viewer to question the scale of the subject matter while evoking unforgiving nostalgia. In contrast, the monumental drawings of Myers illustrate relationships between sentient beings (such as creators, wolves, and giants) and the natural environment.  Typically monochromatic, Myers’ gestural, explosive mark-making creates a vibrating, textural scene indicative of someone fervently searching for meaning from place.  His drawing installations can encompass such a wide expanse that the viewer feels dwarfed as though they are standing in the middle of a vast landscape.  

 

Pro∙ject is a drawing and photography collaboration that celebrates the sensibilities of two individual artists while rethinking and accentuating the complex relationship between hand-made and machine-made marks.