PLAY (DATE)
10/7-11/18 2022
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Opening Reception: 10/7 6-9 pm
Cleo the Gallery is pleased to present Play (Date) with work by Max Simon, Lucie Howson, Garrett Gould, and Lucy Anderson. This exhibition celebrates play with process, form, and reference.
Lucy Anderson’s immediate motivation is sincerity in mark making and material authenticity. Using oil sticks and timber boards as her main materials, Anderson illustrates dreamscapes of an obscured consciousness with allusions to childhood beginnings in storytelling. The resulting studies weave between familiar reference and original pattern. As she plays with deliberate marks and raw flourishes she is building a language as heavy in texture as it is in potential for narration.
In agreement with Anderson’s attraction to deliberate mark making, Lucie Howson’s figurative studies have definite lines creating boundaries of the female form. These forms live in symbology of the feminine but play with exaggeration in their curves to animate classic narrative. Using humor and dynamic color, these blocky shapes contain allusions to childish mark making and visual language with the sophistication of questioning societal ideals of autonomy. These reclining nudes generalize the vision of every woman flaunting her body as an exercise of her own power.
Continuing to embrace childlike visual language, Max Simon’s mobiles contain both readymade and fabricated objects that reference play and adolescence. From cosmology to toy dinosaurs Simon’s interests are all present, delicately balanced between one another even while embracing movement. It is a scene he explains as organized chaos, influenced by mechanics, kinetics and the iconic mobiles of Calder while straddling humor and restrained design.
Through humor and calculated craft, we also find Garrett Gould’s work. His surreal sculptures reflect an influence of objects collaged with subversive function. Within the impact of trade work, the domestic, and childhood, there is a respiration of realness and familiarity entering and exiting the work. Despite the presence of comedy and play there is an unease from the dislocation of form and function in each piece. He hopes this unease requires viewers to resolve incongruities between what is evoked through making and what is illustrated from memory.
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Max Simon (b. Brooklyn, NY) holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design. His mobiles can be found at Pirela Atelier (New Jersey), Dobrinka Salzman (NYC) and Steffan Studio (London). He was recently featured in Architectural Digest with Sebastian Zuchowicki and M Magazine (Le Monde). He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
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Garrett Gould (b. Boston, MA) received his BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His work has been shown at Jane Lombard Gallery (New York, NY) Moskowitz Bayse (Los Angeles, CA), Praise Shadows Gallery (Boston, MA), The Holland Project (Reno, NV), Hammock Gallery (Provincetown, MA), and Fisher Parrish Gallery. (Brooklyn, NY). Gould ran a small project space, European, out of the bathroom of his studio from 2018-2020 and plans to re-open the space in 2023. He splits his time between his studio practice, teaching and project management in art institutions in the Greater Boston area, including the ICA/Boston and Rose Art Museum. Gould currently lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.
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garrett-gould.com / @24carotgould
Lucy Anderson (b. Brisbane, AUS) holds a BFA in Painting from Queensland College of Art. She received ‘highly commended’ at the 2018 Moreton Bay Art Awards and her works are part of several collections including Shane and Sally Thompson and Queensland University of Technology. Anderson currently lives and works in Brisbane, Australia.
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lucyanderson.net / @lucy___anderson
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Lucie Howson (b. Melbourne, AUS) received a BA from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She has exhibited at Spurs Gallery and Backwoods Gallery, and was selected as a finalist for the Flanagan Art Prize in 2018 and the Tony White Memorial Prize in 2022. Howson currently lives and works in regional Victoria, Australia.
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luciehowson.com / @luciehowson
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Photos by Jacob Edenfield