Opening Reception: Saturday, November 5th | 6pm - 8pm

Et al. etc. is pleased to present Bruise. The exhibition is a collection of works that are varied aesthetically but are all engaged in how simulation of experience may be met with a unique sense of touch or personal vision. Each artist sources imagery and forms that are not of their making but employ them in various approaches to manifest an unconventional entanglement and shared experience with the viewer.

Facundo Argañaraz’s paintings are gestures of extreme disposition. Cut, cropped, at edge with their industrial material and image production, his transferred and screen printed canvases seem born at the acute end of a postmodernist tradition. An unapologetic editor, we are teased with flashes of beauty bereft of grounding. His work makes material froth of the static from our communications trapped in analog past.

In an ongoing synthesis of 21st century painterly approaches, Ry David Bradley dye-transfers suede with imagery collected, cataloged, and altered by several mobile applications and visual software. The resulting compositions are then physically activated by gestural swirls in the grain of the printed suede. His work ontologically and literally transfers an experience from another place and time through flesh. Pressing his gesture between transferred space and the viewer reminds us to take note of the intimate nature of touch.

In the paintings of Adrianne Rubenstein, however, we are reminded that perhaps there is never a new age. The practice of making images of the things one desires to be close to is at the deepest level of timeless experience. Rubenstein posits the moment of artistic discovery as  subject matter. A sincere mimesis of Spoonbridge and Cherries by Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen, we are set in acid and bold orange toned landscape coming upon the monumental sculpture as it looks set in layers of a hazy recollection. The artist brings us into the act of retrieving a memory with its fluid description and escaping truth.

Gestural swaths of lush paint interrupt found imagery in a collision of self reflection in the works of Peter Bonde. With a firm foot in an established European painting tradition, his self-aware and aggressive collage aesthetic embeds the viewer and the surrounding visual field into the surface of stretched mirror foil. Beautifully loose and straightforward strokes enable the viewer to place oneself in the position of the artist and in-step recreate the act of making the artwork itself. 

Inversely, in the sculptures by Alex Ito we are removed into a surreal mise en scene wherein metal racks, taxidermy, and glass combine in the familiar feeling of something left behind. Presence is felt as an abstract form. Possessing a keen sense of assemblage and design, Ito poetically synthesizes moments of reflection and danger amongst the polished but banal aesthetics of commodity fetishism.

Utilizing the reverse side of the canvas in a unique staining technique the painter Chris Hood binds personal and found imagery into a liminal surface invoking digitally surreal mindscapes. By employing a method similar to automatic drawing Hood creates a entropic feedback loop that melds imagery, foreground, and background in a hybrid space between virtual and material.

As we improve our capability to simulate experience the pursuit of truth and reassurance of what is real will be increasingly challenged. Through unique and timely approaches, the works in Bruise remind us that it is the power of imagination, and felt experience that drives the intellect and pursuit of progress.