OHT Gallery Boston

Previous Exhibits

Fabrications

Jim Lee
Matthew Rich
Kelly Spalding

November 7 - December 13, 2008
Reception: Friday, November 7, 5:30 - 7:30pm

O·H+T Gallery is pleased to present Fabrications, an exhibition of works by Jim Lee, Matthew Rich and Kelly Spalding. The title of this show reflects the working process and sense of materials shared by these artists, though the exhibition could just as easily be titled Hybrids, since the work of all three embraces elements of both painting and sculpture.

Jim Lee is a Brooklyn artist whose work is the most 3-D in the group. Lee's witty, mostly monochromatic constructions/paintings take their cue from the cast off piles of construction debris common to building sites. Canvas, plywood, plaster, plastic, paint... all find their way into Lee's deceptively unassuming objects. His matierials may be humble, but Lee's work is meticulously crafted to produce skeletally built, painted, wall reliefs ranging in scale from room-sized to petite.

Boston artist Matthew Rich insists that his shaped paper wall pieces are sculptural. Photographs of the works suggest op-artish, multi-colored, shaped paintings, but a visit to Rich's studio reveals his quasi-assembly line process. Beginning with large sheets of paper roughly painted with a roller, he then cuts and assembles the pieces to specifications outlined by drawings he keeps in small notebooks. The finished works are elegantly crude paper assemblages, some intimate, some large, all quirky statements to Rich's unpretentious process and aesthetic.

Longtime Boston artist Kelly Spalding's (see above) painterly abstractions respond to the geometric shapes of her canvases. Her most recent work focuses on stripes. "There is something so resolute about stripes, both factual and commonplace. I have always delighted in them often interpreting the commercial use of striped textiles as paradoxical." Spalding's introduction of dishtowels in her small, jewel-like paintings allows the wavy linear patterns of the stretched linens to animate the works. The dishtowels also add a layered depth, which Spalding acknowledges when she refers to the works as three-dimensional collages.