Brenda Barnum, Miki Lee, Julie Burleigh, Eric Lindaveit, Judith Geichman, Mary Livoni, Lois Gordon, Walter Markham, Karen Lebergott, and Brigitte Riesebrodt.
Featured Artists
Curated by Neil Goodman, Painterly Abstraction was a show about “the other side” of abstract painting. Goodman’s concern was to exhibit painting that followed the tradition of abstract expressionism and process art and provided insight into the work of artists who demonstrate an intuitive and emotional response to paint. The show featured the work of ten Chicago painters, including already established artists as well as the less known, who specialized in large, non-figurative canvases. The exhibition traveled to the Department of Fine Arts at the Northwest campus of Indiana University in Gary from September 4-27 1996.
Artist Mary Livoni’s paintings aimed to convey the creative possibilities that the artist found through abstract mark making techniques. Her canvases showed elaborate abstract compositions obtained by editing, adding and rubbing out paint. Eric Lindveit’s painterly abstract landscapes served as records of his immediate surroundings. Fascinated with the bodily references of old mattresses and the the great deal of genetic information present on their surfaces, the artist collected bedding from many urban sites reconfiguring it into abstract compositions symbolic of the landscape of the human body. Karen Lebergott’s produced human scale paintings made of dried gesso, dirt and debris in order to evoke the intangible qualities of nature. Her use of materials called up associations with the body and the idea of fragility. Julie Burleigh’s work focused on mixing personal and cultural imagery in order to construct hybrid images able to represent a state of conciouise between personal inner world and the everyday reality. The canvases of Miki Lee focused on process and were representative of the idea of painting as an active exchange between the artist and the painting. The work held subtractive elements that allowed the viewer to investigate both the aesthetic concerns and process of the artist. Lois Gordon abstract work aimed to answer questions about the uses of paint to create visual insight into feeling, gesture, order and chaos.
