Opening reception: Thursday, March 20, 6–8 PM

 

Concurrent with The Present: Becky Suss and Carmen Winant

 

Taking a cue from the work of Becky Suss, whose paintings are on view in a simultaneous exhibition at Fleisher/Ollman, Inside features artists who explore domestic spaces, reimagine the still-life tradition, and investigate the threshold between the inside and outside worlds. Broadly representing Fleisher/Ollman’s program, Inside brings together self-taught artists, both canonized and emerging, trained contemporary artists, and artists working in progressive studios (also known as supportive studios or disability art studios). The exhibition reveals stories contained in the everyday spaces that we call home: the rooms we inhabit, decorate, and make our own; the food we eat; the cats we live with; the plants we care for; the objects and images that define who we are; even the micro-world of jumbled items hidden away in our junk drawers.

 

Kate Abercrombie (b. 1978, lives and works Philadelphia, PA) creates delicately detailed paintings in the still life tradition incorporating images of objects with personal and symbolic significance that often reference narratives found in literature, myth, and spiritual traditions.

 

Ann Buckwalter’s (b. 1987, lives and works Durham, ME) folk art-inspired paintings of domestic interiors infused with a sense of mystery and ambiguity, meld the traditions of her Pennsylvania Dutch heritage with aspects of desire, the body, and femininity.

 

House plants overtaking a bookcase; a glimpse of a body showering behind stippled glass are among the ways Scott Marvel Cassidy (b. 1964, lives and works Los Angeles, CA) transforms the domestic everyday into strange and unsettling paintings. An exacting oil painter, Cassidy paints from life, constructed tableaux, human models, and mannequins.

 

James Castle (1899-1977, lived and worked in Garden Valley and Boise, ID) is recognized as one of the pre-eminent self-taught artists of the 20th century. Born deaf and having never learned to speak, sign or write, Castle poured himself into art making—he is especially renowned for his soot and saliva interior and landscape drawings on found paper and packaging materials.

 

Anjali Goodwin’s (b. 1997, lives and works in Philadelphia, PA) still lifes celebrate food. An elongated mixed media painting on view honors a Thanksgiving feast, Goodwin’s favorite holiday. Goodwin works out of the Center for Creative Works, a progressive studio in Wynnewood and Philadelphia.

 

Olivia Jia (b. 1994, lives and works Philadelphia, PA) interprets the still life tradition by way of trompe-l’oeil oil paintings that conjure a re-discovered lost archive of images as if excerpted from books. Her work is a form of self-portraiture in which objects and images—cultural touchstones—form the boundaries of identity.

 

Julian Kent (b. 2001, lives and works across Cleveland, OH and New York, NY) is a self-taught artist who paints portraits of imagined people and pets in domestic settings as well as still lifes. His work explores everyday Black experience rendered through thick planes of pigment both gestural and tightly controlled.

 

A founder of Tierra del Sol Foundation’s progressive art studios in 1989, Michael LeVell (b. 1964, lives and works Los Angeles, CA) has been inspired by notions of the interior since a young age, first drawing from his sister’s doll house furniture and later focusing on images from Architectural Digest. Lovell also makes ceramic sculptures loosely based on architecture and furniture.

 

Sarah McEneaney (b. 1955, lives and works Philadelphia, PA) synthesizes daily life with the fantastical in autobiographical paintings employing perspectives both off-kilter and omniscient. Her works have a dream-like quality in which the scene is seemingly depicted by an all-seeing story teller/artist invisibly hovering above.

 

Keenly studying the world around him and honoring, as the artist explains, “the little stories,” be it the everyday realm of home or the sublime beauty of coastal South New Jersey, John Joseph Mitchell (b. 1989, lives and works Tuckahoe, NJ) translates the act of looking into small paintings set in handmade frames.

 

Sarah Pater (b. 1987, lives and works Philadelphia, PA) creates paintings that are, according to the artist, a “non-narrative, visual diary of objects, views, and ideas gathered from everyday life that I digest through invented compositions.” A reoccurring compositional strategy employed by Pater is a still life arrangement on a window sill peering out into a landscape.

 

Ann Toebbe (b. 1974, lives and works Chicago, IL) incorporates multiple perspectives in paintings that are sometimes based on memory. One work featured in the show presents the artist’s father (now long retired) relaxing in his kitchen after a hard evening of work, favorite snacks and the familiar objects of home all within reach.