December 5 - January 2, 2021
A group exhibition featuring Vincent Falsetta, C. Meng, Maja Ruznic and Anthony Sonnenberg.
From the gallery:
“Conduit Gallery is pleased to announce Speaking in Tongues, a group exhibition of works by Vincent Falsetta, C. Meng, Maja Ruznic and Anthony Sonnenberg. Speaking in tongues, also known as glossolalia, refers to the phenomenon of speaking a language indecipherable to all but the speaker. The practice spans continents and millennia and has origins in Greco Roman and Christian religious traditions. It is therefore often considered divine in its origin; the speaker Pulling up the Roots of meaning through ecstatic action. Speaking in Tongues is also the name of the 1983 art rock masterpiece by The Talking Heads whose track listing activates this text.
The four artists in the exhibition, each with their own idiosyncratic approach to image making, Swamp their works with ideas and intent through their own visual language. Vincent Falsetta’s large oil on canvas painting, Untitled 80-7 (1980) will be on view for the first time at Conduit Gallery. Precisely painted shapes rhythmically balance in a Wild Geometry and float above a stippled ground, Making Flippy Floppy into a steady choreography. A collection of small new canvas works by Chinese painter C. Meng illustrate the artist’s deft balance of his Eastern and Western artistic lineage. In the small mysterious canvas, Before Dawn (2020), a cadre of faces on a black ground evoke late night Slippery People rambling and discussing which Girlfriend is Better, their unanimous chatter Burning Down the House. Based in Roswell, New Mexico, Bosnian born Maja Ruznic conjures ancestral wisdom in her paintings and drawings. In the new large-scale ink on paper drawing, Dream Catchers (2020), a monochromatic Moon Rocks landscape is populated with figures both implied and well defined, each body fluidly coming into and out of focus through time and memory. Arkansas based multidisciplinary artist Anthony Sonnenberg has become well known for his elaborate porcelain sculptures that blend high art Baroque and Rococo maximalism with twentieth century thrift store kitsch. Each semi-functional vase and candelabra drips with flora and fauna and asserts, “This Must Be the Place” the viewer’s eye shall land.
Vincent Falsetta is a Texas based artist who was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. His parents immigrated from Italy in the 1940s. He earned an MFA in Painting/Drawing from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia and Rome, Italy in 1974 where he studied with artists Stephen Greene, David Pease, John Dowell and Richard Crammer. In 1972, he received his BA in Art from Temple University and worked with John Wade, Dennis Adams, Neil Kosh and Don Lantzy. After teaching at Indiana University, 1974-1975 and the University of Utah, 1975-1977 he moved to Denton, to teach at the University of North Texas, 1977-2017. He is now Professor Emeritus and lives and works in Denton as a full-time artist. Born in Shanghai, C. Meng came to the U.S. to pursue his M.F.A. at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio in the mid-eighties. For over three decades, he has employed his superb draftsmanship and facile hand to convey with simple lines, notations and scenes from his daily life and travels. From his native China to Parisian cafes and the wooded areas of New England, Meng’s elegant genre paintings have shown a by-standers glimpse into everyday life. Meng has held the position of Senior Lecturer at Wellesley College in Maine since 1997.
Maja Ruznic, a prolific and active artist, is primarily a painter, a storyteller who conjures form and narrative from ground up mineral, smeared oil, and stained canvas. Born in Bosnia and Hercegovina in 1983, Ruznic immigrated to the United States with her family in 1995, settling on the West Coast where she eventually went on to study at the University of California, Berkeley, later receiving an MFA from the California College of Arts. Ruznic’s often-quoted biography – a refugee who escaped the Bosnian War – is only the beginning of her journey. Ruznic’s vivid paintings speak for themselves, depicting figures that seem to emerge from the caverns of human history, from within their own supports, and somehow from within the viewer’s own recollections. These paintings breach something intrinsically human and Ruznic guides us deftly with dark humor and complex representations, not dissimilar to Werner Herzog’s wry, but poignant 3-D documentary depicting the oldest painted images in the world. Ruznic has exhibited internationally and her work has been written about extensively, most notably in Artforum, ArtMaze Magazine, Juxtapoz, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Studio Visit Magazine, and twice in New American Paintings, including the cover as selected by curator Anne Ellegood. In 2018, Ruznic was a recipient of the Hopper Prize. Ruznic will have her first museum show at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos March – Sept 2021. Ruznic lives and works in Roswell, New Mexico.
Anthony Sonnenberg’s luscious ceramic sculptures set a stage calling the spectator to ekstasis (to be or to stand outside one’s self.) The elaborate hand-built ceramic sculptures echo the decadent elaborations of Baroque and Rococo fioriture. Initially reminiscent of past civilizations’ aesthetic efflorescence, upon closer inspection, the viewer can vaguely identify familiar modern tchotchkes built into the structure. Born in 1986 in Graham, TX, Anthony Sonnenberg earned a BA with an emphasis in Italian and Art History in 2009 and an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Washington, Seattle in 2012. Residences include; Ox-Bow, Saugatuck, MI (2017); Lawndale Artist Studio Program in Houston, TX (2016);”
On View: December 5, 2020 | 1–5 pm
1626 C Hi Line
Dallas, 75207 TX
(214) 939-0064
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