Wallstreet 2 - Kristen Schiele
Showing work alongside Verne Stanford on June 29 will be mixed-media artist Kristen Schiele. In her artistic career, she has explored paintings, scenic installations, and collage in a historically aware and dramatic fashion. Her collage paintings usually feature allegoric or theatrical subject matter and architectural, geometric lines backlit by landscapes.
The works are inspired by a multitude of sources including stage sets, cinema, folklore, allegory, kitsch, pulp magazine cut-outs, and storytelling that is “psychologically dramatic and playful.” Considering the canvas as a stage or a story is an interesting approach, and allows Shiele to portray the recognizable as well as the obscure. There is also an element of conflict and clash in many of her artworks –– natural scenes represented with movie stills, a nude figure drawn over with rigid lines, or a moose lost in a sea of symmetry.
Lady Stole - Kristen Schiele
Can there exist subjects that are organic and animated in a highly structured world? How do various historical traditions and media still resonate with us? Schiele seems to ask a lot of questions with her work, capturing the viewer in these recreations of the old into the contemporary. Whitehot Magazine has said of her process: “While painting as a medium carries the burden of its history, Kristen Schiele is attempting to dissect surface, peeling away at the layers of process and convention in order to create her own ritual.”
If her canvases were stages, Schiele could be said to have an eccentric cast and elaborate set.
Gang of Girls - Kristen Schiele
Her most recent work has featured natural settings that create a “raw, clashing framework for small moments of silkscreened 70s movie stills,” including mundane activities like watching television or reading the paper. “When we step into Schiele’s worlds,” writes ArtSlant, “it is hard to tell if we’re walking into the static of a television screen, a warbled version of magazine adverts, or onto a pulsing dance floor.” Dream catchers, quilt patterns, and folk art also grace her canvases, inviting a magical quality into media scenes.
Schiele will be showing new work alongside fellow mixed-media artist Verne Stanford beginning June 29 with an artist reception from 5-7 p.m. We hope you can join us.
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