26 Mar 2011

New Wallworks at Maryland Art Place, Baltimore

New Wallworks brings together a selection of striking and vital work of a diverse range of artists from across the country. Organized by MAP's new consulting curator Michael Klein, formerly curator for Microsoft.

Exhibition will include works by Ann Agee, Stuart Arends, Luca Buvoli, Greg Colson, Ken Fandell, Charles Goldman, Greg Lamarche, Matthew McCaslin, Cordy Ryman, and Rebecca Smith.

These energetic artists, each with his or her style and aesthetic principles, represent the many directions of contemporary art at work today, whether it is making use of abstract forms and structures or illustrating representational scenes. And while they explore different visual ideas and express different concerns about content they do share an interest in redefining that traditional divide that exists between painting and sculpture. The artists selected for this exhibition imagine their work as functioning, in part, to expand on what we define a painting or a sculpture to be.

Fundamental to contemporary artists is their allegiance to the idea of invention. At the same time they desire to redefine and expand the character of what is called art. Traditionally painting and sculpture have been separated by both methods and means. Today this is less true, by a new definition a painting may include materials other than oil on canvas and sculpture can be anything created in three-dimensional space. The exhibition includes works executed directly on the wall, works pinned or mounted to the wall, and works attached to the wall as if the wall were acting as a pedestal. There is no uniformity of materials; the exhibition includes works in painted frames, ink on Plexiglas, video and found wood.