SILVERMAN and The Majestic Theatre Condominium Association preset
Ali Harrington: Neck of the Woods
OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, November 6, 2014, 6—8 p.m.
The Majestic Theatre Condominiums
222 Montgomery Street
Jersey City, NJ 07302
201.435.8000
Exhibition on view in the lobby from November 6, 2014 to February 28, 2015.
Ali Harrington, Toxic, 2011, Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches. Photo courtesy of Cary Whittier.
“What I love about what I am doing is being surprised about what the painting, drawing, or sculpture turns into” — Ali Harrington
SILVERMAN AND MAJESTIC THEATRE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION present “Ali Harrington: Neck of the Woods,” curated by Brendan Carroll. This exhibition features a selection of works on canvas and paper completed over the past four years. From visionary landscapes to absurd caricature, Harrington relies on spontaneity and improvisation to develop her singular imagery.
“[My] paintings and drawings are driven by a search for the image,” says Harrington. “It’s thrilling to problem solve, invent, and figure out how the painting or drawing will resolve in the end. To hold a structure in place, it’s like a game of imposing just enough order onto the chaos of color, light and tone, gesture, form, rhythm… Sometimes the finished work is more abstract, other times more representational, but the question of ‘what will this be?’ is at the heart of everything I do, and keeps me hooked.”
An intuitive, unpretentious artist, Harrington tends to work in series where artworks are born out of play and free association. Whether she’s painting or drawing a person, place, or thing, she invariably starts with a reference to explore the subject at hand while creating the work.
For example, Mountain Goat depicts a large, cloven hoof beast standing astride a craggy precipice at twilight. Directly below the animal is a safety net—the kind associated with the circus. Its inclusion is both jarring and comedic. Toxic is a grotesque abstraction of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Harrington reduces the deceased leader to a truncated, headless black form, which she sets against a stark desert backdrop. Gadhafi seems to be held together by nothing more than epaulets and insignia. Nest depicts an elusive, buzzing form, coming from a description in Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities. Its conical shape and hue bring to mind a beehive as much as Brigitte Bardot’s hairdo from her 1962 film A Very Private Affair.
Harrington’s otherworldly landscape drawings are based on direct, personal experience, but they are not drawn from direct observation. To build forms and imagery, she uses saturated colors and expressive mark making, which borders on the fever pitch. These works nail down the eye with their whirling surfaces, and combination of unconscious symbols and distilled evocations of the natural world.
“Once a drawing or painting is done, it is done, and I’m ready for the next,” Harrington notes. “Each work is inextricably linked to the medium itself and the unpredictable path it takes before reaching its conclusion.”
Ali Harrington is an artist currently living and working in Jersey City, New Jersey. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University (2014) and a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis (2005) where she studied painting and psychology. She has exhibited in New York City and Baltimore, participated in a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2013, was featured in New American Paintings in 2013, and was nominated for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Visual Arts Grant in 2014.
The exhibition will be on view at Majestic Theatre Condominium Association through February 28, 2015. For further information, please visit us at SILVERMAN or call number (201) 435-8000.
“Ali Harrington: Neck of the Woods” is the twenty-second exhibition that Brendan Carroll will organize for SILVERMAN. For additional information on the artist, go here: alisonharrington.com
SILVERMAN has presented the works of Sara Wolfe, Anne Percoco, Shauna Finn, Melanie Vote, Paul Lempa, Fanny Allié, Michael Meadors, John A. Patterson, Charlotte Becket, Roger Sayre, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Tom McGlynn, Margaret Murphy, Valeri Larko, Tenesh Webber, Glenn Garver, Jennifer Krause Chapeau, Michelle Doll, Tim Heins, Megan Maloy, Laurie Riccadonna, Thomas John Carlson, Tim Daly, Ann Flaherty, Scott Taylor, Jason Seder, Sara Wolfe, Beth Gilfilen, Andrzej Lech, Hiroshi Kumagai, Tom McGlynn, Victoria Calabro, Asha Ganpat, Darren Jones, Ryan Roa,Laura Napier, Risa Puno, Nyugen E. Smith, Amanda Thackray, and Kai Vierstra.
Transportation directions from Lower Manhattan to downtown Jersey City.
Brendan Carroll 