Stardust

Two extraordinary artists made overdue OFF THE WALL debuts in PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES. While CHARLES EMLEN isn’t going anywhere — his sculptures are in our next show — we must bid farewell to PAULA GILLEN and her SUPERPOWER WOMEN IN SPACE. Some protagonists in her digital photomontages are larger than life; others are seemingly mired in workaday life…only it’s in outer space! The work fits perfectly with Paula’s penchant for biting social commentary and her prevailing sense of humor. “Influenced by Surrealism, Feminism and The Pictures Generation, my work strives to be satirical, irreverent and playful,” the artist tells us. In the world she has created for this captivating series, “forward-thinking women are in charge — and there’s a trap door to Earth if you get out of line.” After Friday, alas, we have to pop that trap door and simply wait until Paula returns to our Wall.

PAULA GILLEN
“Domestic Space”
18 x 16
aluminum print of
digital photomontage
300.

Pure Craft

With PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES well into its final week, it’s the last chance for fans of our five amazing artists to fall in love — and welcome great art into their homes. The latest such acquisition, soon bound for the West Coast, is this marvelous canvas from JOSEPH EGGLESTON. Part of a newer series inspired by his favorite horror flicks, this painting offers an imagined scene from 1996’s “The Craft.” Says the artist of the larger works in the set, “All of these paintings are created from using multiple image stills [from the film] to make something old anew, like rearranging puzzle pieces. In fact, some sections are completely made up but still capture a feeling of nostalgia and a fondness of where it was derived. I opt for the long landscape-style canvas to recreate the feeling of a ‘widescreen’ video format and place figures in different positions to suggest movement. My desire is to try and make it feel like we are peeking in on a moment in time that has been captured with some wild paint strokes.” But while every cult classic deserves re-viewing, the streaming platform that is our Wall is taking down these titles after this Friday. So come in and log on while you can!

JOSEPH EGGLESTON
“Who’s Connie Francis? Honey, Listen and Learn”
18 x 36
oil and acrylic on canvas
1100.

New Math

As our boffo OPENING RECEPTION draws to a close — though we intend to keep the party going until the end of the night! — we need to bring into the fold of today’s posts one more artist. We first called out CHARLES EMLEN’s phenomenal installation in our 3D space last Saturday with a video post, but it's worth spotlighting again...plus the artist points out the calculus of his two-screen multimedia work, which suggests that PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES is by far our most prolific show in terms of numbers of pieces included at once. “In this installation, there are two monitors. One displays a 10-minute looping composite video. The second shows a random slideshow with roughly 110 unique images,” explains Charlie. “Assuming the video changes every 5 seconds, that alone provides approximately 120 individual scenes. Combining those scenes with the slideshow images yields well over 10,000 unique scene/image pairings! A veritable cornucopia of iterative design.” Simply WOW.

CHARLES EMLEN
“Contemplo Armamento”
composite video animation
video screens and hard drive
3000.

...Something Blue!

Looking for any color in the palette? Or for that matter, any tube on the paint rack at Dick Blick? Look no farther than the work of JOSEPH EGGLESTON. A self-confessed painter of “messy portraits,” the artist is also on a new run with his subject matter, which would fit just as neatly in the last BORROWED category. Since the pandemic, he has found himself watching and rewatching his favorite horror films, predominantly cult classics or classics-in-the-making. From there, it gets fun, as Joseph describes. “I strive to create a likeness but shy away from exact replication; it isn’t important to me if the viewer knows the source material (although it is fun when people have that AHA! moment). This idea of valuing likeness over replication made me wonder: what would happen if I manipulated the stills in order to manufacture a ‘scene’ that feels like it is from a film but doesn’t actually exist?” Many of his larger canvases in PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES — OPENING RECEPTION tonight (3/9), 7-10 PM —do exactly this. The smaller work, like this homage to the ouevre of Jordan Peele, focuses on pure portraiture. All of them immediately transport us. So figure out how you will get out of the house to see us and this great art...and don’t say nope!

JOSEPH EGGLESTON
“Young Red”
acrylic and charcoal pencil on wood
125.

...Something Borrowed...

Next is a truly illuminating artist making her debut in our space — but one we’ve admired from afar for quite some time. PAULA GILLEN uses her photomontages to create amalgamations of found and “vintage images, pop art and fashion, along with my own original photographs.” In doing so, she delves into “themes of psychology, social commentary and humorous disruptions of original and found imagery.” For her SUPERPOWER WOMEN IN SPACE series, the artist has created a single-gender society, where women are in charge not only of their domain but of the whole damn universe. It’s playful, thoroughly engaging and really needs to be experienced in person. What better occasion than the OPENING RECEPTION tonight (3/9), 7-10 PM, of PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES? Power up your rocket ship and be there!

PAULA GILLEN
“Bravely Shouting into Space”
20 x 16
aluminum print
300.

...Something New...

It’s been over a decade since the art of JON LAIDACKER has graced our Wall. Always comfortable in any creative setting, from traditional painting to mural arts, this artist is a trailblazer of a young medium: digital painting. “While it has managed to be acknowledged,” Jon observes, “digital painting has a way to go in gaining genuine appreciation among fine artists.” Although the subject matter here, as stated in the title, spans generations, his body of work in PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES — OPENING RECEPTION tonight (3/9), 7-10 PM — showcases fresh dimensions. The artist is undertaking more complex setups that we have seen before and showing his work both at larger scales (this piece) and in smaller, innovative packaging. Jon’s four small paintings on the post are also available in one signed, limited edition 4-pack that fits in your pocket. Pretty cool. Very new!

JON LAIDACKER
“Generations: 70 Years on a Shelf”
digital painting in Procreate
limited edition of 25
25.5 x 25.5 framed / 350.
22 x 22 unframed / 250.

Something Old...

No, no one’s getting married tonight. But we definitely have an engagement! So in inviting you to tonight's 7-10 PM OPENING RECEPTION for PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES, we happily invoke the age-old adage as we walk you through a few highlights from the show. Let’s start with a “painting” — in fact, a digitally manipulated photograph — that is part of MICHAEL JICHA’s PROJECT 1910 and was previously seen and sold at the 2019 edition of UNDER $100. The difference now is that we have never seen this work in the proper dimensions. Only at this size can we more fully understand the artist’s practice, which “interprets the Post-Impressionist to Surrealist movements.” Find out more in person and on offthewallgallery.org. See you tonight!

MICHAEL JICHA
detail from “Reine d’Or”
35 x 25 framed
digitally manipulated photograph
500.