The Chazan Gallery at Wheeler is pleased to present Public Domains, a group exhibition of works by Sammy Chong, Elizabeth Ferrill, Robert Morgan and Brian Shure, from February 16 to March 08, 2017. An opening reception will be held on February 16, 2017, from 5:00-7:00 pm. The public is invited.
Sammy Chong’s work explores the social, physical, and spiritual phenomena of disengagement in public spaces. We pass through subway cars, train stations, shopping malls, and street corners every day, but are we connecting with one another, and with the inner-self, during these transitions? Common spaces make objective the different forms of solitude that are linked to the ever-expanding human density within modern urban centers. Forced to inhabit them with others, the visible distance between people can be a reflection of an intangible, yet deeper personal disjunction.
The vast solitude of the American landscape is the subject matter of Elizabeth Ferrill’s work, particularly places that seem cold but emotionally charged, dehumanizing yet full of personal experience. This includes empty public places that remain tensely suspended within a quiet moment between what has occurred in the past and what will occur in the future.
Robert Morgan’s latest work is a series of large, densely hued paintings which are cut out and glued together to create various visual planes. The paintings are composed of a number of layers of watercolors mounted on other watercolors. The resulting enlarged images and moody atmospheres are an attempt to create an eerie, disquieting transcendence, drawing the viewer into an inner world of emotional and sensual conflict.
Brian Shure is is a painter and printmaker interested in the representation of people in public spaces, the quiet, quotidian enjoyment of existence and fragile sense of safety and trust—too rare in our world—when we share proximity with strangers. The modeling of forms in illusionistic space and pictorial illusion itself fascinates him, and the way we form an instantaneous—if fleeting—emotional connection to the representation of a recognizable human form is compelling. Only people themselves seem to him more magical, complex and filled with wonder than this possibility of providing an arena for a narrative in a simple, simultaneously available field.
Chazan Gallery at Wheeler is a nonprofit artists’ space which exhibits a wide range of contemporary work by artists living or working in the area. Providence is a city with a very large community of artists, and the gallery provides an excellent space for these artists to exhibit their work. Through an open jury process, the gallery shows work from among the strongest artists in the area in a series of varied and interesting exhibitions each year. Bill Van Siclen, the Providence Journal’s art editor, has called the gallery “a model of quality and consistency. The artists have been among the best the state has to offer.” Located on the East Side of Providence near Brown University and RISD, the gallery is totally supported by Wheeler School, a gift to the Providence arts community from the school.