Still-Life-s
Still-Life-s at Available Space Art Projects
By D.K. Sole
Ginger Bruner, Ash Ferlito, Maureen Halligan, Homero Hidalgo, Afsaneh Javanmard, Dylan Jones, Fay Ku, Yuino Nakabayashi, Kathleen Nathan, Lisa Rock, Aaron Sheppard, curated by Pasha Rafat
Still-Life-s is Pasha Rafat’s latest curation of artists who have worked in or with UNLV’s art program: graduates, former artists in residence, and one current student. Everything here is a representational piece of some kind, even when (in a small painting by Homero Hidalgo) it looks like a flattened circle with a disconcerting tongue-like flap hanging over the top. “F-f-ruit?” you whisper to yourself, inspired by Ginger Bruner’s gold-spattered photographs of various fruits hanging nearby.
Walking into the gallery you’re met by a tight row of ceramic vessels on a vivid green wall (by Rafat) before you make your way around to Hidalgo’s painting of the same arrangement followed by a row of small canvases by Lisa Rock. Last time Las Vegas saw a large-scale presentation of paintings by Rock she was working with abstract patterns in her MFA thesis show, but now we see what happens when she decides to melt those patterns into real-world things: the criss-cross of a breeze block wall sliced through by the vertical bars of a fence with the leaves of a rose bush creating some interference for frisson. The artists in Still-Life-s like patterns, forms, shapes. They enjoy one straight yellow object tilted towards another (Aaron Sheppard), or the outlines of moths laid out in a row (Ash Ferlito). Life is organized. You look at Maureen Halligan’s compellingly clear image of a chair surrounded by white space and feel that she chose her subject for the sake of the patterned weave in the back and seat. The arm of the chair as it angles over the weave is speaking the same language as Rock’s vertical bars crossing the breeze block.
Like Rafat’s curation of UNLV MFA graduates at Summerlin Library earlier this year, the exhibition is an opportunity to see what people have been doing since you saw them last, or to find out what happens when they work in an unfamiliar way. The strong, cartoonish dabs of Hidalgo’s “Jardin Conojos,” currently up at the Winchester-Dondero Cultural Center, make an interesting contrast to his tidy rendering of the curator’s bottles here. Still-Life-s is only up for one week, so if this sounds appealing then be there for the closing reception on Saturday, December 18th, from 2 p.m. to 6.
Still-Life-s at Available Space Art Projects, 900 Karen Ave C-214, Las Vegas, NV 89109
Open 1 -4 p.m., Monday, December 13th, 2021 - Friday 17th, with a closing reception from 2 - 6 p.m. on Saturday, December 18th.
Posted on December 16th, by D.K. Sole