OHT Gallery Boston

Previous Exhibits

Spring Formal

Jennifer Riley, John Mendelsohn, Donna Avedisian

April 1-23, 2005
Reception: Friday, April 1, 5:30 - 7:30 pm

O·H+T gallery is pleased to present Spring Formal, an exhibition of paintings by Jennifer Riley, John Mendelsohn, and Donna Avedisian. Each of these artists addresses the formal aspects of painting with a personal, and sometimes eccentric, voice.

Jennifer Riley's recent work is a departure from her elegantly modulated stripes of the past. As Riley investigates the effects of light and color in space, her paintings have developed a quirky nether world of shapes beyond the still present stripes. The result is a series of candy colored abstractions, titled Tutti Frutti, where the elements of color and line are used to push the boundary between the two and three-dimensional realms.

John Mendelsohn's paintings are visually lush and intellectually crisp. Editing his process and color choices, Mendelsohn creates pulsing fields of layered horizontal brush strokes where the structure of the works is defined by the shifting value of the colors. The artist cites water currents, textiles, the architecture of digital images, and minimalist music as influences. He also notes that the work relates to computer scientist Stephen Wolfram's idea of how a basic reiterated procedure "can yield complex and unpredictable results."

Donna Avedisian refers to her recent works as "Sound Paintings" and with titles like GRAaaaOHp-ghh and piuh-piuh-faaaah, she suggests that they are based on actual sounds. Organic paint blotches are positioned in slick fields of variegated color to create loosely organized arrangements. Playing the randomly occurring shapes off the meticulously painted backgrounds, Avedisian demonstrates her interest in "phenomenological happenings" that blur the distinction between the natural and the artificial.