Altered Landscapes
March 2nd- April 1st 2007 Showing in Projects Gallery & Projects Room

This March Projects Gallery concludes its group show season as it stages an exhibition that challenges the typical vision of the landscape show. Although nature and urban scene paintings are standard feature in the local art arena, Projects Gallery has selected artists who present a different view of the subject.

Pushing the boundaries of landscape, six featured artists present disparate visions of the world, real and imagined. Douglas Wirls crafts serenely haunting fieldscapes, created by pastel on polyester film. The layers of swirling grasses allude to the absence of humanity and its impact on the natural. Frank Hyder, known for his immersive environmental installations, presents large scale paintings. Hyder’s work evokes a communal past through dream-like visions. Nic Coviello utilizes the technological to explore and express the natural. Whether creating digital images or hand-pulled prints, Coviello deconstructs the texture of nature and creates a new, intersecting vision. The sky is the inspiration for paintings by Steve Cope, although his cloudscapes are interrupted by the curious presence of pattern spheres drifting through the sunsets. The artist’s focus on floating spheres creates images that are simultaneously soothing and disquieting. The textural paintings of contemporary life by Tom Brady are nearly sculpture as the artist builds and slashes layers of contrasting colors. Abstract as well as figurative, Brady’s unique rendering elevates the familiar to the surreal. Henry Bermudez, the internationally celebrated Venezuelan painter who was the subject of a solo show this November, displays a new body of work. While continuing to investigate pre-Columbian and Christian mythologies, Bermudez’s imagined jungle landscapes present a world between worlds. Altered Landscapes will also offer a peek at some newly discovered talent.