Art

Gallery Exhibit - Hettmansperger & White

Sue HettmanspergerSue Hettmansperger
CHIMERA SERIES
This work muses on the complex relationship of humans to their environment, molecular organization, botany and the physics of space. The language of painting embodies this investigation of the morphology of organic form through process, materiality and its inherent collaboration with the structure of space.

As I investigate a fusion of the human body with the natural world, the unpredictability of form produces visually inventive collisions. Within this series there is an emphasis on the unfolding of a painted image and pictorial space where the underlying internal rationale changes and shifts before our eyes. Transforming itself, it is as though the form travels through a topologically stretched or folded space, differentiating its shape in accordance with changing unseen mathematical parameters. Hybrid images are created, acknowledging the present ethos of genetic and digital manipulation within our culture. Signaling changes in the way we think about pictorial space, this expanded permeability of form mirrors a current cultural perspective in which boundaries between organisms are increasingly blurred. Musing on the interdependence of human and botanical, organic and inorganic systems in a conflicted embrace, this series provokes thought about cultural attitudes and perceptions of our place within nature.

Chimera series

Susan WhiteSusan White
In my recent paintings, I have explored the use of a bilateral Rorschach-like image. Using enamel and acrylic paints as my primary medium, I create a vocabulary of small organically inspired figures. Presented on a painted field, these emblems are at once anatomical and spiritual as they slip back and forth between references to the body and images of Buddha or the Virgin of Guadalupe. The images also become botanical, insect-like or mutations of some hybrid futuristic organism. These equivocal figures mark the precarious intersection between my intentions and the unique constellation of responses brought to the work by the viewer. The controlling objective for this body of work is to press further into the exploration of the boundaries between the decorative impulse and the much darker, emotional, philosophical sources. Some paintings have a dense, drawn, almost woven element that recalls both crocheted materials and a diagrammatic metaphysical drawing, while others have a linear striped motif that becomes an animated matrix or scaffolding.

Susan White Painting

My painting shares lineage with the current resurgence of vibrant, powerfully colored abstraction in painting, with its historical precedent in the Optical and Pop painting of the sixties and in the Pattern and Decoration movement of roughly the same time. I am interested in imbedding potent feminist language in these new paintings that have clear historical references to the past.
The paintings also function on another level to reference the act of painting itself. They are executed by pouring and pressing without brushes, yet appear at first glance to be mechanically generated. I am interested in the duality between appearance and process in these pieces.
There is an ongoing dialectical thread in the development of my work that resurfaces with the introduction of a more sculptural element.  I have been researching how my paintings, in my aesthetic vocabulary of excess, have a strong connection with historical and contemporary manifestations of the chandelier. The exploration of light, space, transparency and calligraphic drawing all coalesced into an obvious connection with the chandelier. I am currently developing sculptural installations for Kenise Barnes Gallery, Larchmont, NY, Cheryl McGinnis Gallery NYC, NY, John Davis Gallery, Hudson NY, Touro Law School, Islip, Long Island, NY and Olson-Larsen Gallery in Des Moines, IA. I have also just completed an installation at he Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, opening September 13, 2010.

I have also completed three sculptural commissions for the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics and one for Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, IA.

Last Updated: 11/18/11