Bed Bath & Between
Curated by Julie Alexander, Nicholas Nyland, and Matthew Offenbacher
February 5-28, 2015 at SOIL Gallery, 112 3rd Ave S, Seattle, Washington, USA
Artists: Julie Alexander (Seattle), Katrina Bremamann (Berlin), Maria Britton (Brooklyn), Dawn Cerny (Seattle), Terry Green (UK), Margie Livingston (Seattle), Nicholas Nyland (Tacoma), Matthew Offenbacher (Seattle) and Mathieu Wernert (Strausbourg).
Julie Alexander, Nicholas Nyland and Matthew Offenbacher proudly present paintings and sculptures by nine local and international artists in a hand-painted wallpaper environment
Oscar Wilde’s reputed last words: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go.”
The artists in Bed Bath & Between conflate high modernism with sewing projects, easel painting with thrift store shopping, conceptual thinking with material exploration. By placing these works in and around highly patterned wall coverings, the curators are curious about certain basic figure / ground relationships. Is this all just decoration or do these relationships mean something?
Bed Bath & Between explores human pattern building and the insistent dissolution and reforming of patterns. Each iteration in the process reflects the individual and their social group. The challenge of distinguishing a figure from a ground is a fundamental human challenge. Life is the emergence of a figure, a complex series of negotiations between a figure and a richly patterned ground, and a final dissolve back into the gestalt.