Shape/Form/Structure
Juried by Elizabeth Rooklidge
Curatorial Statement
“Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” —Bertolt Brecht
What is shape? As a noun, the term signifies the external form, contours, or outline of a given element. Shape is one of the primary building blocks of visual art, creating structure in two or three dimensions, in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, and photography. Using tools such as line, color, value, and shadow, many artists employ shape to represent identifiable subjects. The artists in this exhibition, however, work in abstraction, an aesthetic strategy in which shape itself becomes a subject.
As a verb, “shape” means to give definite form, organization, or character. This meaning describes the processes of artistic practice yet also points toward Bertolt Brecht’s characterization of art as a tool for shaping reality. While abstraction might initially seem divorced from reality, it in fact enriches our understanding of the world around us, crafting a visual language variously anchored in rationality, ambiguity, science, spirituality, and the material present. Drawing on these dynamics, the artists in this exhibition explore the ways in which shape defines our world and point toward art’s ineffable ability to to give form and structure to our experience of reality. – Elizabeth Rooklidge
Wall 1
These artists focus on one of the most fundamental forms of abstraction: geometric shapes. In a wide array of media, they employ geometry to ends far more dynamic than the mere sum of their parts.
Wall 2
With evocatively organic shapes, this group of artists engages another primary mode of abstraction. In these works, biomoprhism suggests naturally occurring forms such as plant life, microscopic organisms, and the human body.
Wall 3
The artists in this section draw on recognizable subjects— such as the alphabet, rumpled fabric, and traffic cones— to demonstrate how alteration of familiar shapes can move a work from realism to abstraction.
Wall 4
These artists find their source material in the natural landscape, manipulating its shapes to emphasize the energy and complexity of undomesticated life.
Wall 5
While many artists utilize a vibrant array of colors to give shapes their qualities, these artists employ a restrained palette to prompt an exploration of shape’s more subtle characteristics.