MATERiAL MATTERS
SEPTEMBER 20—NOVEMBER 9
Curated by Ari Montford
Featuring: Michael Cochran, Jason Travers, Lloyd Martin, and Suzan Shutan
Opening Reception: Friday, September 20, 5:30—7:30 pm
Artist’s Talk: Wednesday, October 2, 6 pm
Closing Reception: Friday, November 8, 6—7 pm
MATERiAL MATTERS is a multimedia exhibition that aims to explore how nationally recognized artists, Michael Cochran, Lloyd Martin, Suzan Shutan and Jason Travers, navigate cross-cultural associations and narratives to reference and (re)shape meaning. Their work interrupts the viewer's perception while simultaneously engaging them in a diasporic dialogue that explores a transformational and intersectional experience. Drawing from diverse influences such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Bauhaus, and ancient Buddhist architecture, the artists’ creative practices confront and distort relationships between form and signification.
Image: Lloyd Martin
The four artists are striving to express how material can give new meaning to abstraction, and further probe their viewers to investigate the source of inspiration behind a piece. This exhibition offers a bridge related to timeless traditions in cultural mapping, often referred to as pancarta, a practice that showcases the rituals, relationships, and memories that make a location/space meaningful. Viewers will see representation of African diasporic aesthetic in the pieces’ compositions and colors, particularly influenced by the Boston ICA’s recent Simone Leigh exhibition. There is reference here regarding indigenous perceptions and understanding, as well as representation of urban life and a collective creative practice.
There are numerous references to urban life in the exhibition. These artists take similar elements, but show different approaches to abstraction. Travers engages the energy of the cityscape, a theme explored in Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942. While Cochran and Martin’s staccato gestures channel the rhythm of Harlem Jazz. Shutan’s organic sensibility employs a repetition of material and form reminiscent of Sam Gilliam’s Colorfield paintings. Their compositions utilize shape and color while reflecting architectural references such as apartment blocks, row houses, track housing, even reaching back to the pueblo dwellings.
Spirituality is yet another connecting element coalescing in all of these artists’ histories, with these spaces foundational to their aesthetic. Travers emulates an intellectual fervor regarding how compositional elements relate to the contemplative moment of being, reminiscent of the Bauhaus and East Asian aesthetics. The functionality and beauty in craft speaks to the way Travers assembles meaning from known forms. The artists embrace the complexity of our world, in which they are speaking through a lens of cultural inclusion. This is particularly true of Shutan as many of the works consider environmental justice in their use of material and meaning. This exhibition is then an amalgamation of concept and purpose with cultural intersection as a significant arbitrator.
bell hooks wrote that, “beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” Ultimately, the artists of MATERiAL MATTERS are paying tribute to a world culture that is about engaging an interconnected intersectional space. Thus, a transformational creative practice is being fostered. The spaces and cultures that fostered the artists are directly inspiring the locations mapped in this exhibition. Viewers are invited into a conversation about origin and memory equaling the pancarta that each artist presents.
MATERiAL MATTERS is co-curated with David Hammons without his permission in honor of Charles White.
Exhibition text is written by Ari (James) Montford, curator and Melanie Coretti, student intern at University of Rhode Island
Quote from bell hooks from Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1996).
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Michael Cochran is a sculptor who draws richly on ancient, non-Western architecture and philosophies to explore the transformation from two- to three dimensions. Through investigating shape and the movement of light on gold leaf, which is employed for its symbolic quality, Cochran’s sculptures suggest ancient rituals while alluding to, and obscuring, their references.
Lloyd Martin is a painter who examines and pushes movement and rhythm through abstract form. An architectural sensibility for framework and structure ground his energetic, urgent brushwork. Martin’s command of both color and line are visceral and intuitive, engaging the viewer with their immediacy and purpose.
Suzan Shutan is an installation artist and curator. Working in and between two- and three-dimensions, Shutan repurposes materials both manufactured and handmade to assemble new environments. With a deep consideration of architecture as part of the work, Shutan distorts optics and perception, confronting the viewer’s sense of meaning within dynamic, new landscapes.
Jason Travers seeks to evoke an experience of remembering and rendering beyond the strictly representational through his painting and drawing. Working in media easily accessible during hikes, namely, ink and water-soluble graphite, Travers (re)creates natural landscapes to record the experience of assembling meaning from known forms.