Real Thing at Lane Meyer Projects, Denver
February 4 - March 20, 2022
Curated by Renee Delosh
Lane Meyer Projects | 2528 Walnut Street, Denver, CO
Gallery website
Several works co-opt products or brands for personal ends. Allison L. Wade’s practice is rooted in language and communication, examining how subtle shifts in context can amplify and recast meaning. In Funky Junky, sequential images of jukebox 7” singles have their artist names redacted, leaving our attention to focus on their aesthetic qualities and track titles instead. Names like Scotch and Soda, Sky High, and I Don’t Like to Sleep Alone read off like realist verse, glimpses that together coalesce into one never-ending night out. KT Hickman’s ongoing series of Coke Paintings take inspiration from one of the most universally known logos of the last century. Whereas brand recognition relies upon following specific visual guidelines, Hickman’s canvases seek out variation in all directions. The word “Coke” twists, switches fonts, changes color palettes, and plays off of art historical referents. With each canvas, Hickman moves through divergent scenarios, testing the limits of legibility.
Themes of play and seriousness lie at the heart of works by Jeff Grant and Craig Hein. Titled Effort objects, Grant’s series of framed drawings describe ambiguous forms, object-characters that hint at a range of potential functions but refuse definitive categorization. Smooth and biomorphic, part of their allure lies in this unknowability, which encourages a wandering mind to cycle through myriad possibilities: tools, sex toys, prosthetics, figurines. Composed with the impartiality of observational renderings, these are slippery yet truthful depictions. Craig Hein’s wall-based sculptures combine identifiable but disparate symbols, with references ranging from souvenirs, children’s artwork, and religious imagery, to tropes of conceptual art-making from the 1960s and ‘70s. Distinctions of high and low culture are made irrelevant, as the artist’s material preference for brightly hued polymer clay and acrylic paint results in a de facto cartoonishness across his subjects. Made at a deliberately anti-heroic scale, Hein’s iconographic mash-ups poke fun at egotism as they ponder daily existence.
Kristen Jensen and Andrea McGinty develop their works through observation, noticing materials and forms in their environments that others might overlook. Jensen’s vermillion ink drawings depict iron gate designs in common motifs informed by natural phenomena. The vibrant red-orange of the ink rusted metal while conveying a sense of energy. Drawn using brushes of the artist’s own making, they act as expressionistic blueprints, succinct yet sensorial representations of ordinary beauty. Strewn flowers and a shooting target are examples of the everyday things that form the basis for Andrea McGinty’s photographic collages, which begin as diaristic cellphone snapshots. After printing them on vinyl, McGinty manipulates the images through layering, cutting, weaving, and sewing, each edit lending further physicality. Through this process, the impulse to live-stream one’s every waking moment is redirected to instead meditate on one arbitrary point in time, if only for the sheer pleasure of seeing what there is to know.
Renee Delosh (b. 1987 Huntington, NY) currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In 2019, she presented a solo exhibition, Ch-Chess, at Lane Meyer Projects in Denver, CO. She received her BFA at the School of Visual Arts, New York and has previously exhibited works at SITUATIONS, New York, NY; Tops Gallery, Memphis, TN; Lane Meyer Projects, Denver, CO; Yes Ma'am Projects, Denver, CO; and Wayfarers, Brooklyn, NY.
Jeff Grant (b. 1975) lives and works between Berlin and New York. Murmur, a two-person exhibition of works by Jeff Grant and William Burton Binnie, is on view at Keijsers Koning in Dallas, TX from February 11 through March 18, 2022. Grant studied at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998 and at Goldsmiths College in London in 2000. His work has been shown throughout Europe and the US: Grimm/Rosenfeld, Munich; Thomas Erben Gallery, Marianne Boesky Gallery, Whitespace, and Team Gallery, all NYC. He was recently included in Circus of Books at Fierman Gallery, NY; blinding shadows at Frappant Galerie, Hamburg; Suddenly Last Summer: Part One, at Auxier Kline, NY; and The Unspeakable: A Dark Show at Re: Art Show, NY. His work is included in private collections throughout the US and Europe.
Craig Hein (born 1978) is a visual artist based in New York City. In 2021, Hein spent three weeks as artist-in-residence at OSMOS Station in Stamford NY, followed by a solo exhibition at OSMOS Outpost in New York City. Hein usually works from a home studio, focusing on only one or two works at a time. During his residency, Hein used the large space to allow himself to take more of an intuitive and expansive approach to art making, working on several objects at once and letting messiness serve as an instigator in the creative process.
KT Hickman (b. 1988, Youngstown, OH) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA from School of Visual Arts in NYC and has exhibited works in the solo exhibition Thirst Asks Nothing More, curated by Leo Fitzpatrick at The Viewing Room, Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY and participated in group shows Traders: Traded Works from the Personal Collection of Katherine Bernhardt, Dragon Crab Turtle, St. Louis, Missouri, PSYCHO at East Hampton Shed & Tow Brooklyn, NY and A Musician's Day at Neighborhood Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.
Kristen Jensen is a Brooklyn based artist who has exhibited domestically and internationally at Simone Subal,, Nicelle Beauchene, Bortolami, the Shanghai Biennial and others. Recent awards include a Lighthouse Works Fellowship, Haystack Open Studio Residency, and St John's Pottery Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Fellowship. Jensen was an Abrons AIRspace resident in 2016-2017, an AIR at Shandaken Projects at Storm King in 2016, and led a performative painting and sculpture workshop titled "Enable Uncontrol" as part of the Wanderings & Wonderings series at Storm King Art Center in the fall of 2017. She received her BFA from Syracuse University and her MFA from Hunter College.
Andrea McGinty (b. 1985, Sunrise, FL) is an artist and writer based in Hamden, New York. Her solo exhibition Clint Eastwood is on view at SUNNY NY in New York City, through March 12, 2022. She received her MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 2014, and a BA in Art History from Florida Atlantic University in 2007. McGinty’s work has been exhibited internationally, with solo and two-person exhibitions at East Hampton Shed (East Hampton, NY), Holiday Forever (Jackson, WY), and Miami Prácticas Contempoaneas (Bogotá, Colombia). She was awarded a fellowship with The Lighthouse Works (Fishers Island, NY) in 2018. She is the author of “Ah Yes, Bad Things”, a photography and poetry chapbook published by Soft City Printing (Brooklyn, NY) in 2017, and “God, I Don't Even Know Your Name”, a novella published by Badlands Unlimited (New York, NY) in 2015, which was released as part of Paul Chan’s Hugo Boss Prize exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum of Art the same year. Her work has been featured in publications such as Mousse Magazine, W Magazine, The New York Times, and The Paris Review.
Allison L. Wade (b. 1978, USA) deals with relationships and problems inherent in contemporary modes of communication through her work. Her paintings and photographs show text messages that have ended the artist's own relationships, whether sent by her or to her. The texts featured in Wade's work are an exposition of one-way communication and social distance. It is easier in our postmodern world to leave a voicemail (and now, a text message) than to talk face to face to other people. These new tools in communication put the sender even further away from the recipient. Simultaneously, Wade founded the art salon Crystal Flowers on the Upper West Side of Manhattan out of the space that, 100 years ago, was the home of Florine Stettheimer, and housed the infamous Stettheimer Salon. Crystal Flowers hosts exhibitions of artists whose work echoes Florine’s ethos. Wade was educated at Iowa State University, where she received a BFA. Subsequently, she received an MA in education at the University of New Mexico and an MFA in Photography from Cornell University.