I WANT TO BE A JOYFUL BOTTOMLESS PIT
featuring Jeff Mayry and Fiona McElhany
featuring Jeff Mayry and Fiona McElhany
This exhibition joins together the works of Jeff Mayry and Fiona McElhany to create an experience centered around play, nostalgia, and ephemerality. Mayry, who predominantly works in the expanded field of painting, has created a dwelling assembled from painted canvases. Within that space, McElhany has situated a scent.
By activating Mayry's energetic and compulsive mark making with McElhany’s experience based pieces, a singular experience is borne from multiple sensory activations. Both artists are compelled to make as an extension of their inner logic and selves. The result is a bottomless pit, wild with synergy.
Curated by Häsler Gómez and Kristin Hough
By activating Mayry's energetic and compulsive mark making with McElhany’s experience based pieces, a singular experience is borne from multiple sensory activations. Both artists are compelled to make as an extension of their inner logic and selves. The result is a bottomless pit, wild with synergy.
Curated by Häsler Gómez and Kristin Hough
My House Will Have a Roof by Jeff Mayry, installation, variable dimensions, oil paint and collage materials on stretched canvases joined with clamps, 2022
Matchbox by Fiona McElhany, fragrance comprised of: biononanal, civet (synthetic), edenolide, rose otto & bulgarian rose, seaweed, oak moss, butter, black pepper, palo santo, sandalwood, 2022
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OPaf North, Saturday, May 14, 2022 at Juilliard Park, Santa Rosa, California
Photographs by Häsler Gómez
Photographs by Häsler Gómez
Jeff Mayry (Sacramento, CA)
I make things because I enjoy making them, but also because I simply do not know what else to do. Over the years my creative practice has become so engrained in who I am that I do not know what I would do without it. I have become so attached to making things that it is a part of my existence, identity, and the way that I experience and interact with the world. I develop my work without any true aim in hopes that it will be an extension and an expression of my inner logic, and my inner life. All of the paintings in this installation were made at different times. In their original conceptions, each work was made to stand alone as a singular thing. However, when overlapped and combined, each piece becomes a part of an ontological timeline. It is my hope that the viewer will look into this work and see their own reflection. Not in a physical sense, but internally, on a primary level where existence is not concrete. |
Fiona McElhany (Reno, NV)
I am influenced by where I grew up in Northern Nevada, making the best of little pleasures in a gothic desert and tourist destination. I have a degree in printmaking and chemistry from the University of Nevada, Reno and practice interior design regularly. The human face uses 42 muscles that contain an exponential amount of combinations for expression. The Duchenne smile is one of 1764 possible facial expressions. Matchbox is not a memory but a new way of living - using artificial notes to produce realness, a Duchenne smile. Not yet obsolete in a world engineered to end, feeling something that you’ve saved for years hoping for the perfect moment to feel again. |
