A NEW ATLANTA GALLERY PRESENTS: WORKS BY TANIA BECKER AND BARBARA REHG

A NEW ATLANTA GALLERY PRESENTS: WORKS BY TANIA BECKER AND BARBARA REHG Pentimento: The Layers Beneath Ty Stokes Gallery – 261 Walker Street, Atlanta, GA 30313 March 23 – April 20, 2002 The Ty Stokes Gallery is pleased to announce the opening reception of Pentimento: The Layers Beneath… an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Tania Becker and Barbara Rehg. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, March 23rd from 5:30 – 8:30 pm. The gallery is located at 261 Walker Street in downtown Atlanta. The exhibition will also be on view the following Saturdays: March 30th, April 6th and 13th from 1 – 5 pm and by appointment. (Please call 770-437-0367). The Ty Stokes Gallery is the creation of Susan and Bill Bounds. They are longtime patrons of the arts with a brilliant contemporary art collection. The Ty Stokes building was originally a cap and gown factory that the Bounds renovated into gallery and living space. Curator Bill Bounds, III, an 18 year old high school student, is following in his parents footsteps with his involvement in the gallery. The Pentimento show is the 4th exhibit he has curated at Ty Stokes. Pentimento: The Layers Beneath… investigates the journey the two Atlanta artists have undertaken with their new work. The Italian painting term “pentimento” refers to evidence in a work that the original composition has been changed. The different roads the artists took in their exploration of this concept points to the truth that each artist searches to create images that are meaningful to them. Becker and Rehg have both found the layers in their work chronicles the patterns in their lives. The implication that “layers” refers to the history in their lives as well as in the process became the intriguing impulse that produced this body of work and in the end joined these two artists for this show. Emerging artist, Tania Becker’s paintings were inspired by journals and mementoes from her trips to Italy and the Oregon Coast. Layers, veiled by clouds, and often interwoven with embedded elements speak of fascinating metaphorical journeys. Barbara Rehg, one of nine children, was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming. She approaches her art with the same energy that compels her to run marathons (26.2 miles). The need to move is reflected in her work and the gestural lines allow you to travel through her paintings and drawings. The feeling of freedom that movement implies has been a shaping factor in how she paints. The exhibition is free and open to the public. Please call Barbara Rehg at 770-437-0367 to verify hours of operation or to set up an appointment. Catalogue available. A ten percent donation from the proceeds of the sale of the work will be donated to the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.

PALIMPSESTS OF MEMORY: RECENT WORK BY TANIA BECKER

Tania Becker's mixed-media works have the palimpsestic structure of memory itself. Layers of paint, crayon, charcoal, and found objects supercede but only partially efface one another, much the way memories of old experiences make room for fresh ones without disappearing altogether. Becker compares her work to a journal of her travels and experiences; perhaps each canvas is like a page in a journal that has been erased and revised many times. Hints of earlier experiences glimpsed through the screen of more recent ones tempt us to delve beneath and recover those earlier events. The presence of images beneath the surfaces of Becker's canvases is more than implied: it is a powerful presence that gives the work resonance.

ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD 

48" x 48"

Mixed Media on Canvas

Becker's work is not abstract in any simple sense. Through the layered structure of her work, she establishes a dialectic between the abstract and the concrete (not the figurative - the concrete). The found objects, some gathered on her travels, are the most concrete elements in her work, not just records of the past but actual physical remnants of the particular moments at which they were gathered. As records of experience, the layers beneath the surface become progressively less concrete. Like memory traces that persist in immediate experience, they are present, but not fully available. The concreteness of the found objects throws into relief the spectral presence of these other images, and vice-versa. Even as the found elements seem all the more present when contrasted with trace images, their very concreteness also creates a desire to probe beneath the surface, to discover the implied realities and thus restore concreteness to them.

ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK

24" X 24"

Mixed Media on Board

With Becker's love of travel in mind, I liken some of her works to vista seen through airplane windows, landscapes far below glimpsed fleetingly through layers of clouds. Even though we see the land discontinuously, we know it is there, concretely present. Occasionally, specific details emerge to reassure us of the reality of the ground beneath.

ONE STEP FORWARD...TWO STEPS BACK

24" X 24"

Mixed Media on Canvas

In Becker's work, the concrete presence of found objects, the specificity of certain colors, the implied geometrics underlying her compositions - which sometimes rise to the surface in the form of particular geometric figures (circles, squares, grids) - all serve to establish the presence and reality of the experiences undergirding her compositions even when they are glimpsed, as if through clouds.

Philip Auslander

Philip Auslander is a frequent contributor to ArtForum, Art Papers, and other publications. He is a professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture of the Georgia Institute of Technology. His most recent book is Liveness: Performances in a Mediatized Culture, published by Routledge.

 

REMEMBER

36" x 36"

Mixed Media on Canvas