Composed Matter
1 June - 29 June 2024
Opening Reception:
Saturday, June 1, 6-9pm
Curated by Natessa Amin and Kerri Ammirata
Opening Reception:
Saturday, June 1, 6-9pm
Curated by Natessa Amin and Kerri Ammirata
FJORD is pleased to announce Composed Matter, a group exhibition featuring works by Jackie Tileston, Tracy Thomason, Livia Ortiz Ríos, Ava Hassinger, Sarah Gamble, and Kerri Ammirata.
The exhibition is curated by co-director Natessa Amin and Kerri Ammirata and will be on view June 1st – June 29th. The opening reception will be June 1st, 6 – 9 PM.
Composed Matter brings together artists from Philadelphia and New York City who use abstraction to investigate our material and metaphysical existence. These artists use paint, chalk, pigment, plexiglass, metal, wires, water, mica to dig, layer, touch, brush, intertwine with the aim to connect to the sublime. They compose each visual space to see our experience more clearly by activating a heightened sense of the physical world.
Jackie Tileston’s heterotopic spaces are atmospheric expressions of cosmic play, ethereal fogs with lines and dots that create order, like atoms forming in the air. She uses automatic drawing processes and trance-like breathwork to knit together dimensions and altered realities into a majestic explosion of color. Ava Hassinger’s work ‘Grid’ employs the same interconnected lines and webs by physically using wires and fingers to relate to our experience with technology. Her work explores our preoccupation with technology and questions if new modes of connection create more intimacy or isolation.
In ‘Dionysis,’ Sarah Gamble uses her dot motif to show energy and matter reorganizing itself. She explores ideas of transcendence and parallel realities using nature, such as flora and crystals, eliciting a sense of awe. Gamble’s work present’s all realities for consideration whereas Livia Ortiz Ríos’s work pushes the bounds of containment. Ríos uses the transparency of plexiglass to show how negative space, shadow, and reflections connect the artwork to the external world. She distorts our understanding of our physical boundaries.
Tracy Thomason investigates the painting object by building crushed marble layers, flaked pigment, and color to compose a map or a physical manifestation of the body. She intricately charts each movement across the painting surface helping the viewer see the interconnectedness of our world. Kerri Ammirata builds layers of paint to excavate and find the topography of the painting surface. She references deep space and planetary bodies to move our vision to the macro and then brings us back to our physical bodies through the materiality of the paint.
About the Artists:
Tracy Thomason (b. 1984, Maryland, U.S.) received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Exhibitions include a solo presentation at Marinaro (2022, 2020, 2017), NADA Projects with Cuevas Tilleard Projects, NY, NY and a two-person exhibition with Peter Halley at Teen Party, Brooklyn, NY. Select group exhibitions include Analog Diary, Beacon, NY; Over the Influence, Los Angeles; 56 Henry, Asya Geisberg, James Fuentes, and Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York, NY, 106 Green in Brooklyn, NY, and Andrehn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm, SE. Thomason lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Jackie Tileston's paintings are heterotopic spaces in which recombinant strategies and nomadic thinking create complex images that investigate the contemporary sublime and states of being. Tileston (b. Manila, Philippines) spent her childhood as an itinerant “Third Culture Kid”, living in the Philippines, India, England, and France, before moving to the US. She has a B.A. from Yale University and an MFA from Indiana University. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions in Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Dallas, and group exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston), Art in General and the Painting Center (New York), and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art. Tileston is the recipient of the Core Fellowship Residency, the Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2004), the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency (2005), the Guggenheim Fellowship (2006), and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2011) and residency (2017). Tileston lives and works in Philadelphia, where she is a Professor in Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania.
Livia Ortiz Ríos (1985. Arecibo, Puerto Rico) Lives and works in New York. In 2012 she completed her MFA in Studio Arts from the Memphis College of Art. Her works have been exhibited at ProxyCo Gallery (NYC), Embajada Gallery (San Juan), Kilometro 0.2 (San Juan), and 7 Lispenard (NYC). She’s also been part of [...] Entreformas at the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico curated by Abdiel Segarra Ríos, The Green Gallery in collaboration with Embajada Gallery (Milwaukee), Freight + Volume Gallery (NYC) and Masur Museum (Louisiana) among others. Livia’s work has been featured in New American Paintings Magazine and in 2016 was awarded a residency in Vermont Studio Center. This May she’ll be attending a residency at Can Serrat in Barcelona, Spain.
Ava Hassinger (b.1986, New York, NY) is a former resident of RAIR (Recycled Artist in Residence) in Philadelphia. Her work has been featured in exhibitions to include Slow Burn, John H. Baker Gallery, West Chester University, Extra Parts, Good Children Gallery, New Orleans, LA, Alternative Facts, Pleiades Gallery, New York, NY, and Descent, ICA, Philadelphia. She is a graduate of NYU with a degree in Photography and Imaging and a MFA recipient from the University of Pennsylvania.
Sarah Gamble lives and works in Philadelphia and is a Pew Fellow. She has had solo and two person exhibitions at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia PA; Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, GA; Adams and Ollman Gallery, Portland OR; Lump Gallery, Raleigh, NC; Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, NY; PS122 Gallery, New York, NY; and RMOCA, Roswell, NM. Artist residencies include Millay Arts, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, The Vermont Studio Center, The Roswell Artist in Residence Program, Hudson House, Ucross, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, and most recently MacDowell. She received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and her BFA from the Corcoran Gallery College of Art and Design, Washington, DC. She is represented by Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia.
Kerri Ammirata (b. 1983) is an artist who lives and works in Ridgewood, NY. She earned her MFA from Boston University in 2010. She is the recipient of the following awards and residencies: Woodstock Brydcliffe Guild, Woodstock (2022), The Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts, New York (2019), Ne'Na Contemporary Art Space/Monfai Cultural Center Residency, Chiang Mai, Thailand (2019), Vermont Studio Center, Clowes Full Fellowship (2012), HUB-BUB, Spartanburg, SC (2010-2011), and Chautauqua School of Art, New York (2005 and 2006). Recent exhibitions include: In Quiet Motion, Helm Contemporary, NYC; leftovers, island, NYC; Currents, curated by Alex Feim, Morris Adjmi Architects, NYC; More Trees than People!!, curated by Beatrice Modisett and Kerri Ammirata, P.A.D., NYC; Dissolving Boundaries, Gertie’s Window Project, NYC; City Limits, Park Place Gallery, NYC; The Scenic Route, 1969 Gallery, NYC; Along the M Train, The Yard, NYC; Horology, Jack Hanley, NYC; Winter Group Show, Orgy Park, NYC.