621 Opening Receptions and Artist Talks | Jan. 2017

This January, we are excited to continue to present Cornelia Oliver (Tallahassee, FL) with her multi-media installation “KORNELIAHUAS” in both front and back main galleries with the addition of Samantha Burns (Tampa, FL) and Naghmeh Farzaneh (Rochester, NY) with their collaborative multi-media installation “Day by Day” in the Nan Boynton Memorial Gallery!

All three artists will participate in a free, and open to the public artist talk at 621 Gallery on Saturday, January 7th at 1pm where they will share details and insights about their work.

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Cornelia Oliver:

Cornelia Oliver is a Gulf Coast artist who came to Albuquerque to complete her MFA at the University of New Mexico.

The cultural fabric of her childhood in the Deep South and the people, textures, and colors of the places she has visited have had a lasting influence on who she is and the art she creates.

Through the use of evocative imagery, Cornelia feels an artist not only tells a story, but allows each person to interpret and find their own truth in a work; believing this to be the moment in which the work has, in fact, become real. Pablo Picasso stated, “Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” Cornelia’s art reflects this same spirit and drive.

Artist Statement:

Art is the reflection of a creative dialogue with another human being. It speaks to provoke, tease, sooth, and most of all, challenge the viewer in an ever expanding globalized world culture.

To be successful, a piece must connect to a fundamental emotive strain within the viewer: In essence, my fabricated reality becomes an accepted and binding truth. In my work I very much hope to gain perspective on not only my own sense of self as an artist, but on what it means to be an artist today, and where we blur the lines between different fields of study in observation, architecture, experimentation, mimesis and representation.

I seek to emancipate viewers from their specific surroundings while uniting them, through material exploration, color, pattern, immediacy and visual commentary, to embrace a larger moment in human existence. It is this moment where I create my truth amongst the existing realities today.

About KORNELIAHAUS:

After years of work I have just launched “KORNELIAHAUS: Home”, my immersive and interactive painting space. This experiential artwork is meant to serve as a pop- up outpost of my movable empire of me. It is a crossover piece combining architecture, theater, performance, design, and fine art, and ultimately a delving into identity through memory and touch.

This exploration into forced perspective, surface, interactivity, abstraction and figuration, has led me to create a second, printed body of work stemming from my popup installation space. I have had the wonderful pleasure to work with some extremely talented printmakers, photographers, technicians, & engineers, to create an engaging fingerprint, and ENTIRELY NEW body or work, stemming out of my installation space.

I am beyond excited to see this print show realized, and view my crazy KORNELIAHAUS installation in a whole new light. Thank you to everyone involved who helped make this dream a reality. I very much hope you are able to visit “KORNELIAHAUS: Home” as well!

http://www.corneliaoliver.com/

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Sam Burns and Naghmeh Farzaneh

“Day by Day” is the start of a series of collaborative projects from artists Naghmeh Farzaneh and Samantha Burns. Cultivating interdisciplinary practices, this interactive installation is an effort to show that despite growing up in different places, having different experiences and opportunities in life, at the core we are the same; human beings. Though on the surface cultures seem so different from one another, at their deepest levels they share vital commonalities.

www.samanthaburnsart.com

www.naghmehfarzaneh.com