Exhibition Review: "Freaky Flowers" at September Gallery in Kinderhook By Taliesin Thomas
Flora and flowers abound as a lavish theme throughout art history. The great American modernist artist Georgia O’Keeffe, for example, was unabashed in her adoration of flowers. She once commented: “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else.” The current exhibition “Freaky Flowers” at September Gallery in Kinderhook (through May 28) is a celebratory homage to O’Keeffe’s sentiment, and the 27 artists included in this show offer their singular “world-giving moment” through floral-thmed artworks that both captivate and provoke. An irrational visual riot with over 80 artworks that express blossom energies in some capacity, this exhibit is four years in the making and includes paintings, drawings, collage, sculpture, ceramics, video, and installation.
PUSSY: A two-person exhibition at The Golden Hind, Des Moines IA
PUSSY is a two woman exhibition curated by Larassa Kabel and featuring the work of Brooklyn based artist Jenn Dierdorf and Des Moines photographer Brittany Brooke Crow. The closing reception will be on the third floor of Fitch Studios Thursday September 28th from 6 - 8 pm (304 15th Street, Des Moines IA 50315).
Recent legislation about women's physical autonomy has caused widespread concern and will have far reaching and unexpected consequences beyond the question of abortion. Dierdorf's and Crow's works embody two tactics for reclaiming power when one feels powerless: obfuscation and humor. Crow's photographs are a beautiful interplay between the viewer's prurient desires and the artist's control over what parts of her body she allows to be visible. Dierdorf's delightful watercolor drawings based on the Greek mythological character Baubo remind us that joy and laughter can break one from the bleakness of depression and renew one's energy for the work that needs to be done.
Jenn Dierdorf
“Baubo is a fiery trickster from Ancient Greece who is tied to the story of Persephone and her mother Demeter. When Persephone was kidnapped and brought to the underworld her mother was distraught. Everything on earth shriveled and died without her presence. Demeter wandered the earth trying to find her daughter and eventually comes to a palace where she finds work as a washer. She becomes more depressed and hopeless about finding Persephone. Then one day… an old woman approaches her while she’s working. The old woman makes some kind of risqué joke to Demeter and it catches her attention. Then the old woman turns to face her and lifts up her skirt! Whatever Demeter saw it sent her into a full belly laugh that snapped her out of the hopelessness and inspired her to continue the search for Persephone. Of course she finds her in Hades and brings her back home, albeit for only half of the year. This time is attributed to Springtime and the growth and abundance brought by Persephone, and the relationship between mother and daughter. Baubo is described as the sexually liberated, crass and mischievous goddess of mirth. She is a wise figure who embodies the powers of sexuality and laughter. To me she is also a symbol of wisdom and age. The old trickster crone who will teach you a lesson and walk away laughing. I especially love the mystery of “what ever is under her skirt” which to me implies gender fluidity and can also reference apotropaic rituals and gestures. Using ones genitalia to ward off enemies.
My art practice is centered around queer feminism, which to me means always seeking to undermine patriarchal and capitalist paradigms. I am interested in how demonizing and monstrous historical narratives about women perpetuate political, often racist agendas.
I use humor, myth and personal narratives to revisit fabricated stories about women, both real and mythological, to uncover and recognize the power and wisdom they possess. The works in this show are just a few of the many drawings that come from thinking about this wry trickster and feminine power.“
Brittany Brooke Crow
"With a desire to return to the materiality of the printed image, I printed large-format photographs of myself, tore them, and rephotographed myself with the fragments. I am curious as to how the process of collage disrupts the gaze, and whether or not it influences how viewers interpret my literal body and body of work. What am I risking by tearing myself into pieces? What am I exposing, and what might this choice say about my performance of gender and sexuality?"
Brittany Brooke Crow uses image-making to confront her fear of vulnerability while exploring intimacy, ways of seeing, and the expansive possibilities of creating photo-based art. The performative action necessary to create an image is often a part of the content of her work. Crow's self portraiture began as an exploration of the tangle of historical tropes, cultural expectations, and personal control that comes with representing the queer female body. She has since expanded this inquiry into the rediscovery of the materiality of the photographic print.
XX Twenty Year Exhibition June 2 – July 2, 2022 / Morgan Lehman Gallery
XX Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition / June 2 – July 2, 2022
Adriana Farmiga, Alix Smith, Amy Lincoln, Amy Park, Andrea Belag, Andrew Hostick, Andrew Moore, Andrew Prayzner, Andrew Schoultz, Andrew Schwartz, Anna Membrino, Audrey Stone, Austin Thomas, Bob Parker, Bret Slater, Brittany Nelson, Carly Glovinski, Carolanna Parlato, Chris Duncan, Cordy Ryman, Cotter Luppi, Crystal Gregory, Crystal Liu, D'Metrius Rice, Darlene Charnecco, David Aylsworth, David Rathman, David Rios Ferreira, David S. Allee, Don Doe, Edra Soto, Elana Herzog, Elisa Johns, Emilie Clark, Emilie Stark-Menneg, Emily Kiacz, Eric Aho, Eric Beltz, Eric Hibit, Erin Loree, Erin O’Keefe, Firelei Baez, Franco Mondini-Ruiz, Franklin Evans, Frohawk Two Feathers (Umar Rashid), Geoffrey Young, Greg Murr, Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson, Jason Karolak, Jason Middlebrook, Jason Stopa, Jeff Barnett-Winsby, Jeff Perrott, Jenn Dierdorf, Jenny Brillhart, Jim Kempner, JJ Miyaoka-Pakola, John Salvest, Jonathan Ryan Storm, Jonathan Smith, Judith Belzer, Karen Lederer, Katia Santibañez, Katy Fischer, Kim McCarty, Kirsten Deirup, Kris Knight, Kysa Johnson, Laura Ball, Laurie Reid, Leah Tacha, Leigh Ruple, Linn Meyers, Mark Feingold, Matt Kleberg, Maya Brym, Michael Buckland, Nancy Lorenz, Naomi Reis, Nathan Randall Green, Nicole Cohen, Osamu Kobayashi, Paolo Arao, Patrick Brennan, Paul Villinski, Paul Wackers, Phil Knoll, Rachel Klinghoffer, Rob Carter, Rubens Ghenov, Ruby Palmer, Ryan Wallace, Samantha Bittman, Sara Genn, Sarah Hardesty, Selena Kimball, Sharon Louden, Talia Levitt, Terri Moore, Tim Bavington, Traci Johnson, Wendy Small
Installation View
“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”
(This quote is inscribed on a paperweight I gave my partner, Sally Morgan, 21 years ago. It still sits on her desk.)
In the fall of 2001, Sally was working with an art advisor in New York City, and I was fixing up an 18th C. house in Northwest Connecticut. Reeling from the tragedy of September 11th, we were both searching for a way to make meaning and create community. Over the coming months we decided to turn the house’s first floor into an exhibition space and invited a few artists we knew to show their work. In the spring of 2002, Morgan Lehman Gallery was launched.
Over the last two decades, Morgan Lehman Gallery has produced 231 solo shows, 45 group shows, and participated in 76 art fairs, working with over 400 artists. We have had six different brick and mortar gallery locations and more than a dozen off-site projects and collaborations.
For our 20-year exhibition, “XX”, we have gathered over 100 artworks from artists we have collaborated with since 2002. The installation is in the tradition of the Paris Salon and includes artists we have known since the gallery’s inception, as well as some we have just begun to show.
We would sincerely like to thank all the individuals we have worked with over the years: the many, many artists, gallery employees, part-timers and interns, collectors, curators, writers, colleagues, visitors, friends and family, without ALL of whom this creative endeavor would not have taken shape.
-- Jay Lehman and Sally Morgan, May 2022
Jenn Dierdorf, Femme Ballast, 2022, Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 16h x 12w in
Installation View
BLOOM DOOM / Wonder Fair Gallery, Lawrence Kansas
BLOOM DOOM
JANUARY 30, 2020 – MARCH 27, 2020
Opening Final Friday, January 31st, Wonder Fair Gallery presents "Bloom Doom" pairing Brooklyn painters Jenn Dierdorf and Tess Michalik.
The paintings in Bloom Doom know that flowers wilt, but it's the attempt to capture this transient freshness that gives the mark making in these works their urgency. Brooklyn painters, Jenn Dierdorf and Tess Michalik, know how to bring angst, fluidity, and muscularity to a painting genre that many viewers may wrongly think to be merely passive or pretty.
Check out Wonder Fair Gallery here.
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View
The Coastal Post: Studio Visit with Mónica Palma: IN BETWEEN
Studio Visit with Mónica Palma: IN BETWEEN
Mónica Palma’s work is holistically existential. Her practice includes equal parts performance, and the making of largely-sculptural paper works. Originally from Mexico, Palma has been living in NYC for just over a decade. She often incorporates ideas and materials taken directly from her hometown of Mexico City, always elemental and from the earth. In addition to working with tar, burnt tortilla, obsidian and other materials, there is a strong use of her own body and the location of her body that shapes the work. Through her physical involvement, including spitting, biting, tearing, folding and cutting, there always seems to be present a desire to embed the work with her body and her body with the work.
Palma’s work is a kind of bridge. She, and her work, exist between two cultures, between choice and chance, between the physical and the ephemeral. We sat down recently to discuss this middle-place where she roams and how her practice shapes what she makes.
For the full interview click here.
Ladies of the Easel // Atelier XIII Bratislava, Slovakia
Slečny od maliarskeho stojana // Ladies of the Easel
Atelier XIII May 31 - July 26, 2019
A group exhibition feat. four artists from the U.S. and four from Slovakia
A group exhibition of artists from Slovakia and the United States, whose work reflects on the position of female painters in contemporary art. The show features work by: Jenn Dierdorf, Kelsey Shwetz, Kris Rac, Sahana Ramakrishnan, Katarína Janečková Walshe, Margaréta Petržalová, Natália Okolicsányiová and Juliana Mrvová.
PUPPIES & FLOWERS at The Royal Society of American Art, thru March 31st, 2019
Puppies and Flowers
March 5th - March 31st, 2019
BRUNCH RECEPTION: SUNDAY, MARCH 31st 12 - 4pm @ The Royal 400 S. 2nd Street, Williamsburg
Review of the exhibition by Daniel Morowitz of ANTE Mag here.
The Royal is pleased to present, Puppies and Flowers a group exhibition curated by Katie
Hector which features the work of Jenn Dierdorf, Dominique Fung, Delphine Hennelly,
Katarina Janeckova, Tess Michalik, Aliza Morell, and Mark Zubrovich. This collection of
paintings reimagines historically "domestic" subjects in order to reveal a contemporary
unvarnished reality.
BAD AT SPORTS: Jenn Dierdorf Episode 682
Today’s episode of Bad@SportsCenter is a lovey one-on-one conversation with Brooklyn-based painter Jenn Dierdorf. A recovering conceptual sculptor, Dierdorf transitioned to painting a decade ago to reassert fun and frivolity into her studio life. We discuss all the things a vase of flowers can accomplish with the right amount of unction, and the power of solidarity among Dierdorf’s well-anointed Lady Painters.
A big thank you to Ryan Peter Miller for inviting me to speak about my work on Bad At Sports! This Chicago-based podcast hosts an incredible lineup of artists from around the world. So happy to have been part of it!
The Coastal Post: Hein Koh “Splendor In The Grass”
Installation View: Hein Koh “Splendor In The Grass” at Marvin Gardens, Photo by Dan Bradica 2018
I first started seeing Hein Koh’s work popping up in group shows around NYC in 2014. Once you get familiar with her style and sense of humor, they’re easy to spot. A knobby red and white sculpture that both hung on the wall and sat on the floor, from a massive show titled Shrink It, Pink It! In Brooklyn. A pair of hugging flowers with tears running down their petals at another in Ridgewood, Queens (Lorimoto Gallery) . Koh’s work is fun, dark and playful in all the right ways. I had the pleasure of sitting down with her during her solo show “Splendor In The Grass” at Marvin Gardens. We discuss the evolution of her work from painting to sculpture, and how Ivy League schools, a studio in the 5 Pointz building, web design and twin daughters have shaped the artist she has become.
The Coastal Post: Studio Visit with Ayana Evans, Baring Truth
Ayana Evans, Love Letters to LES, 2018 Photo by Karl Cooney
Ayana Evans is a wildly charming, radiant force making her way through the world in a neon spandex catsuit. A self-proclaimed “un-edited” girl from Chicago, Evans uses her personal life and experience to produce performance art, photography, video and even some sculpture, painting and printmaking. Her work challenges societal perceptions of black women and in some cases asks the viewer to take on some of those struggles themselves.
BREAK LOOSE feat. Jenn Dierdorf + Kevin Stuart at H.F. Johnson Gallery
Break Loose
@ H. F. Johnson Gallery 2001 Alford Park Dr, Kenosha, WI 53140
Opening Thursday, February 7th, from 430PM - 730PM
On view through Friday, March 15, 2019
Image by Kevin Stuart, 2019
An unbound painting exhibit featuring work by Jenn Dierdorf and Kevin Stuart. The ouvre of New York’s, Jenn Dierdorf demonstrates exquisitely understated abstractions swiping at the history of genre painting. Kevin Stuart is a Chicago painter who’s colorful large scale work portends a nervous bliss of anonymous city narratives.
Official Website
The Coastal Post : Studio Visit with Sahana Ramakrishnan, Making Myth
Sahana Ramakrishnan, Her Body Moves Through Nebulous Time (Only the Gods Know the Trick), 2017
I met Sahana Ramakrishnan in 2017 during her solo show at Field Projects and instantly felt an affinity toward her and her work. From the onset she conveyed a strong sense of commitment to her practice as an artist but there was also a bit of humor and subversion visible in her paintings and her wry wit. Her work is deeply rooted in drawing and she’s not afraid to bring in whatever materials are necessary to realize her work. Colorful beads and gemstones, hair, rope, blood and a variety of fabrics and trim can be found throughout her works on paper.
Sahana just started a series of mixed media scroll drawings that investigate, among other things, our relationship to animals and the natural world. She carefully hand-stitches her paintings on to beautifully handwoven silks from India and fits each end with wood dowels. All of her work is treated with a high quality of craftsmanship and attention to detail. I sat down with her recently to talk about the narratives that appear in her work, her studio process and what’s coming next.
Bouquet: A Floral Show, Group exhibition curated by Kirstin Lamb
March 26 – June 29, 2018
BOUQUET: A FLORAL SHOW
THE YARD, WILLIAMSBURG
33 Nassau Ave, Floor 2
Brooklyn, NY
Say it with flowers.
A bouquet is an arrangement of flowers, frequently a large and attractively arranged bunch.
Forever in bloom, a flower on a canvas or painted surface keeps its secrets. Flowers are funerary, forever at the precipice of decay. But flowers are also showy pollinators hell bent on reproduction or dramatic displays of color and shape wooing an object of affection.
In this show, I posit the beauty and sweetness of flowers conceals or gives reprieve to the political inner workings of each artist’s project. A painter of flowers may be in mourning, memorializing an important movement or figure, concealing content behind a pretty veneer, or avoiding the more strident politics of their work in favor of something quiet – an act I feel is both sinister and playful.
– Kirstin Lamb
Don’t Make A Scene // Solo Exhibition at Greenpoint Hill, Brooklyn
Jenn Dierdorf // Don’t Make a Scene
October 18 –November 18, 2018
Reception October 26th, 6-9 pm Greenpoint Hill 100 Freeman Street Brooklyn, New York
Don’t Make a Scene is an exhibition of paintings by Brooklyn artist Jenn Dierdorf. Her work uses the artistic and cultural trope of the flower still-life as both an exploration in painting, and a symbolic gesture that looks at gender, identity and cultural boundaries. Historically flower painting has been a pastime relegated to women and seen as a devalued art form. Dierdorf’s commitment to the subject of flowers is related to how others perceive female identity and art by women. Dierdorf’s renditions of flowers are simultaneously elevated and complicated by scale, materials and abstraction. She incorporates a variety of pattern, mark-making, cartoon line and decoration in an attempt to both stray from, and reinforce conventional ideas of this artistic motif. The title of the show comes from the cautionary phrase on behavioral etiquette and refers to the displacement of the flowers in the paintings. The show’s reception coincides with Greenpoint Gallery Night, the twice-a-year gallery crawl highlighting exhibition spaces throughout Greenpoint. Select neighborhood galleries will be open late on Friday, October 26th, from 6-9pm. Visit www.greenpointgalleries.org for more information and a custom map to help navigate the event.
Greenpoint Hill is located at 100 Freeman Street, Brooklyn, New York 11222. Gallery hours are Thursday-Sunday 12-6pm, or by appointment. Please contact the gallery at info@greenpointhill.com for more information.
The Coastal Post: Studio Visit with Naudline Pierre, On Belonging
The Coastal Post: Studio Visit with Naudline Pierre, On Belonging
Naudline Pierre’s large-scale figurative painting encapsulates nebulous worlds where Spirit is revered and connection, touch, and belonging reign. I was introduced to Pierre’s work in 2017 at an exhibition called Landing organized by the curatorial collective Life Lessons in NYC. The exhibition was held in a former convent in Manhattan and may have been the ideal way to view Pierre’s work. Seven different artists’ work was hung in and around the vacated bedrooms where nuns had previously lived for the past 100 years. Pierre’s work occupied one of these rooms. A large canvas filled with luminescent figures, perhaps aiding her female protagonist, in what appeared to be a tender moment of ritual. Pierre’s large-scale figurative works run parallel to religious icon painting and have strong references to European Renaissance painting, but they are wildly different, and quite exhilarating.
For the full interview click here.
The Coastal Post Susan Stainman: Art + Connection
Jenn and Susan at Smack Mellon Gallery, 2018.
On December 9th, 2018 I met artist and friend Susan Stainman at the Smack Mellon gallery in Dumbo, Brooklyn. I was there to see the group exhibition “Empathy” curated by Gabriel de Guzman which featured an interactive work by Stainman.
For the full article click here.