Multimedia artwork brings multifaceted social commentary

1708 Gallery in Richmond has installed FEED, its most recent juried exhibit, which will run from June 5 through July 11. Rob McAdams, this year’s president-elect to the board of directors, said “the gallery wants to break out of the white wall” and “really engage the community.”

1708 organizes juried exhibitions biennially. FEED is collection of 17 pieces ranging from large-scale installation to HD television to painting and photography, and offers the community a diverse artistic experience that is both accessible and relevant. Selected from more than 300 submissions, the work of contemporary artists Jarod Charzewski, Cari Freno, Christine Gray, Mang Geul Han and Ross Sawyers transforms the white, square gallery space into a textured, whimsical, powerful multi-media laundry hamper.

About the work

The gallery window frames the large installation by Jarod Charzewski, who layers articles of clothing into piles that are reminiscent of a 3-D topographic map. Brightly colored shirts, sweaters, and even rogue Santa hats and Scream masks lay in color-coordinated piles. Visually, the effect is beautiful – soft, rolling hills of Crayola colors. Conceptually, the piece is a harsh display of prodigal spending, excessive acquisition, and waste.

“I have to plan things spatially in any way that I can,” Charzewski said.

He worked with a digital model of the gallery floor plan to design his installation. He then bought his clothes by the pound from a Goodwill warehouse.

“I was blown away by the sheer quantity of stuff,” he said.

Clothing from eight Goodwill stores filled the massive warehouse, and it was only a 1 day shipment. Anything that did not sell was destined for landfill.

Charzewski refers to current US spending trends as “an epidemic,” and sees great danger in the spending habits of shopaholic Americans.

“People can replace things with conscious freedom,” he said.

It is that consciousness that Charzewski hopes to inspire in his viewers.

Both Cari Freno and Bang Geul Han have chosen video as the medium through which they speak. Freno’s HD stills of self-examination in nature and Han’s exploration of sexuality are framed within TV screens and add a glowing, technological dynamic to the room.

Next to the other artists, Christine Gray’s work seems more traditional both in style and in media (oil painting on panel/linen, sculpture) though current in subject matter. In her painting Glow-Lure Tears for Moth Mass, for example, insects are tragically moving towards the light of a false exit to a constructed cave. Gray explains that her creatures are “being drawn up to the heavens as if for redemption, but actually it’s a death trap.”

Through her paintings, Gray hopes to assuage an anxiety that she believes is the result of the modern-day perception that culture and nature are separate.

“There is no separation between culture and nature,” she said, “the collapse of the two categories is what my work is based on.”

Ross Sawyers presents a different sort of collapse as he brings to light the haunting reality of housing developments which spring up increasingly close to one another and of the ever-increasing number of foreclosed or abandoned homes. Through a series of photographs taken from small models and then blown up to three, four, or five feet in dimension, Sawyers captures the simultaneous tension and peace of the empty spaces he creates.

Sawyers works from his surroundings, and his models are inspired by the buildings he sees “walking to work or going to the grocery store.” He likes constructing and photographing models because, he said, “I can do with them what I want.”

His models have been inspired by his environment in both Seattle and Southern California, but “they are a little bit skewed or exaggerated,” as he pushes them past the confines of reality.

Furthering the mission

Rob McAdams hopes to continue to find ways to bring the highest quality of national and international contemporary art to the public.

“Even though we’ve been around for 30 years, there’s still a lot in the community who don’t know about us.”

Through the efforts of the board, the gallery director, artists, and supporters, 1708 hopes to continue to find ways to engage the community and expose people to all facets of contemporary art.