Transparent Boundaries︙Group Exhibition
The Aerogramme Center for Arts and Culture x Compère Collective presents Transparent Boundaries on view August 5–30, with an opening reception on Saturday, August 5 from 6–8 PM.
When a boundary is invisible, it’s easy to bump into. It could trip us. Stop us. Confuse us. It could also reveal something about our environment—and ourselves—that we couldn’t see before. For the twelve participating artists, the group exhibition Transparent Boundaries is about finding, testing, and ultimately transforming the barriers that lay between them and the worlds they envision.
Ana Wieder-Blank erects monumental paintings that complicate the contours of traditional mythologies, exploding and reclaiming their meanings for a new, queerer age. Natalie Ortiz paints her friends and family as a pantheon of guardian angels that transcend the quotidian settings she depicts. Cecil Howell’s botanic soulscapes lead us deeper into the beauty and bewildering ambiguity of the natural world. From pushing past the borders of the human body to conjuring aspirational alien topographies, the artists of Transparent Boundaries offer constructed alternatives to the limits we have inherited.
The exhibition is hosted by Compère Collective, and curated by The Aerogramme Center’s founder, Zoë Elena Moldenhauer.
Ana Wieder-Blank
The Opposite of Narcissus 1, 2021
Encaustic and oil stick on panel
3 x 3 ft
I am working on two ongoing installation projects that interpret mythology and biblical narratives with a strongly feminist analysis. These installations contain oil paintings, ceramic sculptures, monotypes, mixed media works on paper and more. Often these installations will also contain transitory elements like wall paintings that make them site specific. Performances often accompany these installations
I work with narratives from the bible, Greek, Mexican and Indian Mythologies, and fairy tales. These stories are loaded with political, gender and sexual allegories that are as potent today as ever. I use narratives that deal with ideas of outsider marginalization, queer sexuality, environmental concerns and issues of rape and consent. I couple womyn characters together and explore dynamics of hidden and overt love, jealousy, and escape of patriarchy.
The Fairy Tale Protesters uses characters from the Torah and world mythology, to explore ideas of otherness and community. In the Fairytale Protesters characters are taken out of their individual narratives. They protest patriarchy together. They are isolated by gender, belief systems, queer sexuality, untypical bodies. They are lesbians, trans, and genderqueer, fat and differently abled. Together they are a powerhouse of protest; united by the things that isolated them.
The Way We Would Live Installation is a sequel to The Fairytale Protesters. The Way We Would Live imagines what happens after the successful revolution by the fairytale protesters (Dinah, Persephone, Demeter, Leah, Hecate and more) Traumas need to be healed, new ways of thinking need to develop, disagreements abound about how to build a feminist utopia. The Way We Would Live will include The Way We Would Heal, The Way We Would Govern, The Way We Would Educate, The Way We Would Give Birth, and The Way We Would Die. While The Way We Would Live tackles the legacy of trauma and hate; it is essentially an optimistic series of work.
The Opposite Of Narcissus A, 2023
Glazed ceramic
12 x 20 x 3 in
Ana Wieder Blank is a contemporary artist working in painting, ceramic sculpture, installation, and performance.
Ana works with narratives from the Torah, Greek, and Indian Mythologies, and fairy tales. These stories are loaded with political, gender and allegories that are as potent today as they ever were. She is particularly interested in narratives that deal with ideas of outsider marginalization, queer sexuality, environmental concerns and issues of rape and consent. Ana Wieder-Blank couples womyn characters together and explore dynamics of hidden and overt love, jealousy and escape of patriarchy. She creates the voices of womyn in these narratives. She changes, distorts, and extends narratives past their end to create contemporary political allegory.
Ana Wieder-Blank graduated in 2011 with an MFA in visual arts from Pratt Institute, with a concentration in painting. In addition to her Thesis show at Pratt she has had three solo exhibitions at Honey Ramka Gallery, in Bushwick. Her first solo show Women of Song was reviewed very positively in the Brooklyn Rail. Her second solo show Strange Friends has been featured on the James Kalm report and Brooklyn Arts Magazine. Her third and most recent solo show The FairyTale Protesters has been featured in White-hot Magazine, James Kalm Rough Cuts, 2 Coats of Paint, Art Spiel and more. She was selected for the Directors Tour at Pulse Miami 2016. Her work has been featured in numerous group shows at Honey Ramka Gallery, Novella Gallery, Regina Rex Gallery, Ceres Gallery, The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and more. She also recently completed a mural in the Lower East Side that was proposed to and accepted by Arts for the City, a nonprofit public arts initiative in NYC.
Ana Wieder-Blank is a 2018-2019 Sharpe Walentas fellow for the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program. Ana Wieder Blank has attended Residencies at Open Wabi, Otis College of Art and Design California Institute of the Arts, the Millay Colony, Alfred University, Vermont Studio Center, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts. Haystack School of Crafts, and Chautauqua Institute.
Her work has been featured in reviews and interviews in the Brooklyn Rail, White Hot Magazine, Create Magazine Maake Magazine, Studio Visit Magazine, W Magazine, Bushwick Arts Daily, and HyperAllergic.com. James Kalm featured The Fairytale Protesters in a video. Ana was interviewed by James Kalm of the James Kalm report/rough cuts about her show Strange Friends. Strange Friends was selected by Brooklyn Arts Magazine critics list as one of the best shows of 2015.
Website: www.anawiederblankart.com | Instagram: @anawiederblank
Barbara Owen
The forest at the edge of the meadow, 2022
Acrylic, wax, and shellac on wood
28 x 12 x 1 in
As an artist who specializes in creating abstract painted objects, my work revolves around the exploration of colors and shapes. Through my art, I aim to evoke emotions and provoke thought by transcending the boundaries of traditional representation. I am particularly drawn to and work within the themes of landscape, femininity, and beauty, infusing them into my creations.
The work shown is part of an ongoing series called little narratives. I combine found and constructed objects to create a tableau. Oftentimes a found object starts the process of imagination and I let it lead me down the path of inspiration.
Barbara Owen is currently a visiting artist with the Healing Arts program at Hasbro Hospital, Providence, RI, teaches collage techniques at various art centers and is a board member of the Hera Gallery and Educational Foundation, in Rhode Island. She has lectured in the art departments at Wheaton College (Norton, MA), INTAR Summer Program at RISD, (Providence, RI) The Teaching Gallery, HVCC (Troy, NY), and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, (Boston, MA) among others.
Owen’s paintings, and installations have been shown in public and private venues, including The American Embassies in Paramaribo, Suriname and Port Moresby, Papa New Guinea, Untitled Art Fair (Miami, FL) The Newport Art Museum (Newport, RI) and Smyth TriBeCa Hotel, (New York, NY). Her work was recently included in Repair: Sustainable Design Futures, edited by Markus Berger and Kate Irwin, Routledge, London and New York and the Collections Catalogue for the American Embassy in Paramaribo Suriname, where a painting is in the permanent collection. She is the founder and director of Periphery Space (2016-2022)
Owen has been awarded residencies nationwide, including Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, CA Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, NY and MASS MoCA/Assets for Artists, MA. She received her MFA at School of Visual Arts in New York and a BA from Bennington College, Bennington, VT. She divides her time between Rhode Island and New York.
Website: http://www.barbaraowen.net/ | Instagram: @babsowen
Cecil Howell
Interpreting landscapes is a process of defining uncertainties and averaging the ambiguous. Landscapes are infinitely old and constantly emerging but appear static in our maps and field guides. They are continuous yet fragmented by the artificial boundaries we project upon them. They are bound to the reality of their bedrock, yet our perceiving minds interpret them through a cloud of historic and emotional references. To stay alert to the uncertain and ambiguous, I find myself navigating the conceptual territory that lies between the known and the unknown, mapping its contours, testing its soils, reveling in the flicker between the two states. In this space, landscape, the focus of my work, opens up beyond its immediate realities, beyond what our eyes see and what our maps show us. Here, it is both (or neither) the bedrock and the memories made on its surface.
A Still Life, 2023
Pastel, ground, gouache
11.75 x 15.5 in
A Still Life, 2023
Pastel, ground, gouache
9 x 12 in
My practice is an imbrication of art and landscape architecture, another betweeness that becomes fertile ground as I move between drawing, design, restoration, botany, model making, and research. This variety of mediums opens up a circular process, with each way of making and thinking informing the other, often guiding me to unexpected places. The work that emerges revels in the ambiguities inherent to translating the complexities of our world into language, science, and design.
Cecil Howell is a landscape architect and artist based in Queens.
Website: https://cecilhowell.com | Instagram: @cecilhowell
Janelle Junn
The origins of my work began with my love for running and a fascination with ultra marathons in deserts. These large isolated and barren landscapes that test human endurance can also provide a quiet and meditative atmosphere. Painting reduced forms and focusing on color, I build upon the deserts contrasting color of horizons by reveling in that moment when sky meets land. By painting repetitive lines and various layers of translucencies, this helps reflect the ever changing nature of running in these uncompromising and desolate places. Through abstraction, I hope to create a space for the physical and spiritual connection found in this environment.
Janelle Junn hails from Chattanooga TN. She holds a BFA from Southern Adventist University and a MFA from Pratt institute. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Website: www.janellejunn.com | Instagram: @janellejunn
“come, meet me where the sun last touched…”, 2023
Acrylic and flashe on canvas
28 x 30 in
Jebediah Long
Living in a world often bouncing between cerebral and artificial I search for moments of embodiment and connection to ground myself. These moments are the springboard for my narrative oil paintings that straddle an ambiguous space between recollection and imagination. My paintings are stills of conjured stories; dreamlike scenarios where characters demonstrate their psychology through their own search for connection. Bodies are rendered in vivid color and paint is applied with immediacy and intuition. These figures personify the bending and stretching of time and space within a moment both real and perceived. Lips multiply, eyes bulge and legs twist and touch with awkward tenderness as memory and fiction fuse.
Ride, 2023
Oil on canvas
38 x 46 in
Jebediah Long is a visual artist living and working in Ridgewood, New York. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut. At six years old his family moved to the suburbs of Detroit where he was introduced to the murals of Diego Rivera, techno music and baklava. Jebediah received his BFA in Illustration from College for Creative Studies in Detroit. Following college he moved to New York. He has exhibited with institutions such as Kunsthalle Galapagos, International Print Center New York, and Lauren Powell Projects. In 2023 he was the recipient of the James Bernard Haggarty Scholarship Award with NYC Crit Club’s Canopy Program. After spending two and a half years in the sunshine of Los Angeles he is back in New York where he has strong roots and a rich creative community.
Website: www.jebediahlong.com | Instagram: @jebediah_long
Jessica Corujo
Earnest Brain, or Dustpan, 2023
Mixed-media installation
40 x 40 in
Jessica Corujo is an artist based in northern New Jersey who makes mixed media works inspired by our interior lives. These works combine technical drawing and contemporary painting to envision a new perspective on our lives inside architecture and our souls’ reflection on our spaces.
She has studied a multitude of mediums on both East and West coasts of the U.S.A. Her expansive knowledge of these mediums includes formal training in painting, drawing, photography, interior design, digital arts, and art historical research practices. Like her studies, Jessica takes an inclusive approach to the mediums incorporated in her practice, making content-driven work that utilizes its medium as a storytelling tool. She paints in unconventional color, exploring mood in both hyper-realistic and abstract ways.
In her most recent body of work, the “Blue interior series,” she contrasts deep ultramarines and luminescent golds to tell the story of finding light in unsuspecting places.
Website: http://jessicacorujo.com/ | Instagram: @its_just_jessica
Kaira Villanueva
My roots grow with me, 2023
The hand that feeds, 2021
Clay, moss, branch, flowers on canvas
8 x 8 x 4 in
Kaira Villanueva’s art explores ecology, spirituality, and psychological landscape themes through surreal and sometimes fear-tinged narratives, often reduced to atmospheric experiences or analogous character and environment concepts. Kaira often receives comments such as “weird, in a good way” or “a bit creepy,” which is not surprising as her childhood activities included plenty of playing survival-horror games and begging her babysitters to share ghost and cryptid stories.
She aspires to assemble the sensation of discovering Pandora’s box in the International Space Station while watching the sun simmer the earth into a new evolution. Overall, she loves bantering about the origins of humankind and mythological identities and taking care of the planet.
My roots grow with me, 2023
Oil on canvas
14 x 20 in
Kaira Villanueva (b. 1991) is a multimedia artist born in the Philippines and currently lives and works in the northeast tri-state area. She explores ecology, spirituality, and psychological landscape themes through surreal and sometimes fear-tinged narratives, often reduced to atmospheric experiences or analogous character and environment concepts. Her works often receive comments such as "weird, in a good way" or "a bit creepy," which is not surprising as her childhood activities included plenty of playing survival-horror games and begging her babysitters to share ghost and cryptid stories.
Website: kairavillanueva.com | Instagram: @kaira.villanueva
Natalie Ortiz
Benjamin Blames his Bad Luck on Me, 2022
Oil on canvas
23 x 20in
Natalie Jauregui Ortiz is an artist who paints stories of friends and herself as she explores telling stories of underrepresented communities. Reflecting on her experiences as a mixed-generation Mexican-American raised in Northern California and living in NYC, her works investigates themes of intimacy and belonging, isolation and otherness. Her current work focuses on capturing specific moments, oscillating between tight lines with swift movement in glossy, paint-heavy pieces.
Natalie Jauregui Ortiz is a Mexican-American artist from the Bay Area, painting in NYC. She holds a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Exhibitions include New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) (NYC), Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC), ABC No Rio at ChaShaMa Gallery (NYC), Ely Center of Contemporary Art (New Haven, CT), Ice Cream Social (Port Chester, NY), Glass Gallery at Mana Contemporary (Jersey City, NJ), Southern Exposure (SF), and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (Santa Cruz, CA). Residencies include arts letters and numbers in Averill Park, NY, and the New York Academy of Art. She works closely with Art in Odd Places and is affiliated with Office Space (SLC).
Website: http://natalie-ortiz.com | Instagram: @natalie.njo
Basement II, 2023
Oil on canvas
14 x 24 in
Patrick Bower
In many ways, I’m a drawer with a paintbrush. Or a drawer with a hunk of clay. I look to drawing for its links to language, its physical directness and the primal force of the line. I want each of my works to be an action of the mind that vibrates in our bodies. So, I think about power relationships among shapes. I think about movement and tensions. I also think a lot about the varied surfaces of the work as a map of the consciousness, along with the alchemy of color suspended in water. Humor is important, dark and otherwise. The laugh of recognition, the catharsis of it. The absurd. A realization that maybe we’re not alone. That’s when we lean in and take a closer look.
Saturn, 2023
Graphite and acrylic on canvas
23.75 x 27.5 in
Under the Rainbow, 2022
Acrylic, graphite, mixed media on canvas
37 x 66 in
Patrick Bower is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in New York City. After earning degrees in English and Classical Literature in 2001, he spent years writing poetry and songs and playing music all over the world. But after health challenges forced a change in lifestyle, he directed his focus to his studio practice, trying to bring the lyricism and immediacy of musical performance to paper and canvas.
Website: www.patrickbowerart.com | Instagram: @patrickbowerart
Raymond Hwang
My work operates within the framework of burial and excavation. Through a process of layering with both airbrush techniques and traditional brushwork, I reveal forms and symbols that yearn to emerge from within the paintings. Over time, they overlap, hide, and materialize slowly; operating like seasoned actors in an unrehearsed play. The paintings, with very little or no preparatory work, come into existence one move at a time. Utilizing negative space to excavate form, I seek to define presence through absence. Memories bubble up and make themselves known through this process and in the end, we’re left with the record of something that may not reflect factual history, but maybe more importantly a genuine emotional history.
The characters that I utilize in my work are often elements like the hydra, or other relics from my past that reference moments in my personal history. I imagine the hydra as a creature with each of its many heads having their own lives, interacting in different ways, yet ultimately part of a larger whole. Along with other specific references from my life, like a playground dragon sculpture, a power ranger action figure or the durian fruit; this cast of characters are then morphed into a hazy, painterly fiction of personal folklore that allude to how isolation, code-switching, internal drama and the concept of home have frequently intersected throughout my life.
Untitled, 2023
Acrylic and joss paper on canvas
11 x 14 in
Ray Hwang (b. 1992) is an artist from Los Angeles, currently living and working out of Ridgewood, NY. His work consists primarily of acrylic painting and drawing, in which he uses symbols from throughout his personal history to explore themes of family, home and inter-cultural contradiction. He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2016 and has participated in exhibitions in Los Angeles, Denver, Philadelphia, New Jersey and throughout New York City. He has been featured most recently with Art Maze Magazine, Vast Magazine, and was a recipient of both the Keyholder Residency at the Lower East Side Printshop in New York and the Plum Lime Residency in Brooklyn. He has shown recently with Tube Culture Hall (Milan, Italy), 11 Newel Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Spring/ Break Art Show (New York, NY), and LaiSun Keane Gallery (Boston, MA). He opened his first solo exhibition in New York recently with Latitude Gallery (New York, NY).
Website: http://rayhwangart.com/ | Instagram: @rayhwangart
Wendi Men
Wendi Men is a painter who creates abstract notations that allow for narratives and inner visions to emerge. Through gestural brushwork, dynamic compositions, and a profound sense of energy, Wendi establishes a deep connection between nature and the human experience. Her canvases immerse observers in a world of color and gesture, eliciting visceral responses and inviting them into a realm of raw emotion and sensory exploration. Inspired by nature, Wendi’s works embody movement and rhythm, reflecting the ebb and flow of existence. The interplay of form and color in her paintings establishes a dynamic dialogue between the internal and external realms, capturing fleeting moments of beauty and intensity. Her artistic language beckons viewers to engage in personal and subjective interpretations, evoking profound emotions and inspiring contemplation.
HEAT, 2020
Oil on canvas
36 x 48 in
Wendi Men is a Chinese artist currently based in Queens, New York. She graduated with a BA in Painting from Edinburgh College of Art, UK in 2017, and has an MA in History of Art and Archaeology from SOAS, University of London.
Website: www.wendimen.com | Instagram: @wendi_men
ZoË Elena Moldenhauer
Decadent Ground, 2023
Colored pencil on paper, alcohol ink, ink on Dura-lar
5 x 7 in
Under the umbrella of an invented alphabet, Zoë explores sentence structures, syntax, linguistics and more to create a world that co-exists with a modern reality while remaining fictional. Her process of communication re-scripts language in code via visual translation to detail conversations, thoughts, and writings. These meticulous paintings and drawings evolve from Zoë’s research of her transracial adoption, language, and absent heritage. As a Guatemalan-New Yorker who grew up around French, German, Hebrew, Spanish and the Nahuatl language, her fictional alphabet seeks to challenge Western perceptions of space and communication that explore notions of place, belonging, and history making.
Zoë Elena Moldenhauer received a B.F.A. in Painting, Art History, and Curatorial Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art in May 2019; and an M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies with an Advanced Certificate in Museum Studies from New York University in May 2022. She has completed the Latino Museum Studies Program Graduate Fellowship at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino (2022); The Artist Residency Project at the School of Visual Arts (2021); and Baltimore Corps’ Public Ally (2020). She has exhibited at DONNER, wie Blitz, Munich, Germany (2023); Real Tinsel, Milwaukee, WI (2022); Tiger Strikes Asteroid, New York, NY (2021); Center for the Arts Gallery, Townson, MD (2020); and Fox Gallery, Baltimore, MD (2019). Zoë currently resides in New York where she holds a studio at Brooklyn Art Cluster Studios, is a member of Teleportal Gallery, and is a 2023 artist-in-resident at NYC Crit Club’s Canopy Program.
Website: https://zoeelena.net | Instagram: @_zoeelena_
Exhibition Images
About
The Aerogramme Center for Arts and Culture is an online exhibition platform, fine art and literary magazine, artist interviews, and podcast founded in March 2020 at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. We continue to provide opportunities for furthering artistic creativity among emerging and mid-career artists and writers around the world, defying adversity and the challenges of making art in the 21st century.
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Compère Collective is a sponsored artist space of Realty Collective, founded by Victoria Alexander, that offers artists a free, 800 square foot storefront gallery space in the heart of Red Hook, Brooklyn on Van Brunt St. Compère Collective specializes in thoughtful community-centric works and has hosted 100 plus artist exhibitions and events since opening its doors in 2011. Compère Collective’s mission is to nurture and host diverse artistic practice and thoughtful dialogue; understanding that art should be used as a catalyst for critical thinking.
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Artist Talk
Join us Saturday, August 26, 2023 from 4–6 PM for an Artist Talk featuring the artists from Transparent Boundaries moderated by artist and NYC Crit Club co-founder and executive director, Catherine Haggarty.
AUG 26, 2023 from 4:00 - 6:00 PM