Exhibition Runs:
Friday, September 11, 2009 - October 17, 2009
Opening Reception:
Friday, September 11, 2009 - 7pm to 9pm
Debriscapes by Richmond, VA-based Nikki Painter is the recent American University MFA graduate’s first solo exhibition in Washington, DC. Painter exhibits new drawings and a site-specific installation that explore—in bright neon colors, pencil lines, and various materials—the relationship and continuum between the built and natural worlds. According to Painter, “debris as a subject bridges my ideas about these worlds. I have been interested in demolition sites because they appeal to my ideas about the natural world’s tendency toward chaos. This tendency manifests itself in the crumbling and splintering of manmade facades…demolition sites are also indicators of civilization’s cyclical nature - we destroy our structures in order to make way for new ones.”
Painters’ drawings and installations, cheery with color and layered with markings, belie a concern and examination of destruction and connection. Brightening up sticky subject matter, Painter carefully installs layers of detritus in robust three-dimensional collage that combust from the ceiling to the floor. In Painters’ world, these structures are impossibly and chaotically constructed offering visual considerations versus practical use. “Ambiguous places, exploded imagery, and broken motifs within my work correlate with what I perceive both in my internal and external environments as a constant state of flux.” Exploring this continuum of ideas and relationships, the built world is on one end separated by a great range of space and chaos from that of the “natural” world. But these worlds are interdependent and inextricably connected.
Painter graduated in 2009 with an MFA in Studio Art from American University. She received her BFA in painting and printmaking from the Virginia Commonwealth University. She is the 2009 recipient of a Mellon Research grant, the Wolpoff Purchase Award, and Best in Show from the Rawls Musuem in Courtland, VA. Her work has been exhibited at Civilian Art Projects, the Randall Scott Gallery, Paperwork Gallery, Transformer through the X-Initiative, at the Katzen Center Museum and Virginia Commonwealth University.
September 11 - October 17, 2009
Opening reception: Friday, September 11, 7-9pm
With Debriscapes, her first solo exhibition in Washington DC, Richmond VA-based Nikki Painter
exhibits new drawings and a site-specific installation that explore -- in bright
neon colors, pencil lines, and various materials -- the relationship and continuum
between the built and natural worlds.
