Candyland Americana is a group show of multi-media artworks comprising paintings, sculpture, textiles and works on paper. The exhibition explores the parameters of American culture both as an experiment in liberty and self-governance, and as a country that routinely flaunts its status as a deeply unserious place. The ten artists here pull from the fabric of American society, examining commodification, politics, history and identity as subjects in their work. Like Betsy Ross stitching together the first American flag, the exhibition is a crazy-quilt of folk art, pop culture, mass media, pioneer spirit, alternative facts, and the sacred and profane.
Drawing on high and low sources, these artists create visual connections between elements that might not typically coexist. This irreverence is matched by experimentation with materials—traditional mediums like clay, ceramic and textile exist alongside hot pads, neon, epoxy, glass beads, and bleach. A through-line across the exhibition are the metaphorical signs and structures of board games, consumerism and the simulated, junk culture of suburbia and corporate America.
Allison Reimus and Michal Gac Levin draw on domesticity and parenthood in compositions that evoke picnics, vacations, meal time, and cross-country trips. These motifs are infused with an overt craft and folksiness that accentuates the charm and labor of their scrappy, diaristic works. A similar biological lens can be found in the work of Jim Clark and Marcy Rosenblat who invigorate the vernacular of minimalist abstraction with a quirky, idiosyncratic, human touch. Feminine tropes abound in the form of colorful ribbons, flamboyant lace, and buxom curves that diminishes the pomposity of a distinctly patriarchal tradition.
Traversing the landscapes of Taipei and Brooklyn, Yen Yen Chou takes note of the saccharine colors and frou frou details found among vending machines, fast food, anime, digital billboards, lobbies and waiting rooms. Via exquisitely rendered watercolor paintings, Richard Garrison literally charts the wastelands of strip-malls and junk mail in upstate New York. While, Alyssa Fanning ruminates on existence through trees as solid organic forms on terrestrial mounds, transparencies, or inside globes and clouds. All three consider their bodies in space among micro and macro environments, real or virtual.
With drawing as an armature and exploratory device, Jane Fine, Rachel Jackson and Liz Ainslie consider the many facets of identity as manifested in ancestry, nationality and disability. Through a mash-up of glyphs and symbols, art history competes with today’s headlines, and chaos and control, absurdity and despair reign supreme. Ainslie references ambiguous snippets of speech, radio, conversations, and incongruous word pairings, while Fine considers the gaps in her own complicated narrative as she navigates America’s burgeoning authoritarianism. Jackson takes into consideration the gravitas of her own health issues, inflecting her wall reliefs with a sense of disarming humor.
Candyland Americana is curated by Show&Tell an artist collective launched in March of 2024 by Alyssa Fanning, Emma Fanning, Michael Aaron Lee and Patrick Neal. S&T is a lecture series founded with the goal of bringing artists together over conversation and exchange of ideas, fostered through presentation.
PS122 Gallery