Duncan Hannah, ‘Shy Venus,’ 2014, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches
(HUDSON, N.Y.) – There will be an opening reception for solo exhibitions of paintings by Duncan Hannah and paintings and sculptures by Meg Lipke at Jeff Bailey Gallery on Saturday, March 14, 2015, from 6 to 8pm. The work by both artists will remain on view through April 19.
Duncan Hannah is well known for his paintings of ships, cars and women. Taken together, they evoke a world of adventure, escape and intrigue. The title of the exhibition, Distant Marvels, is taken from Jack Kerouac’s short story “Good Blonde,” published in Playboy magazine in 1965. He rhapsodizes about myriad sensations of city life, beauty and decay, and impending thrills. It’s a world of endless possibilities. Like Kerouac, Hannah asks us to “Savor everything.”
Duncan Hannah is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow and has had over sixty solo exhibitions. His work is in the collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Fine Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in New York.
Meg Lipke’s new body of work began with a straightforward challenge: how to move beyond painting on a rectangular support. She painted on muslin with beeswax and India ink, wondering how it would mimic the paper she was working on. Then, she cut out the painted section of muslin that she found most interesting, adding acrylic and fabric dye. These new soft paintings had irregular shapes and numerous edges. Wanting to give the paintings some sort of support, Lipke devised a way to make them similar to a thin flat pillow, with a depth of roughly two inches and finished to hang on the wall. They seemed like fragments to her, like “players removed from the field,” the exhibition’s title.
In addition to the paintings on muslin, the exhibition features a series of small-scale sculptures. Fragments of cloth are painted, dyed and sewn together, covering head-like shapes. Random patterns result, while the sewn edges follow the contours of the curved forms.
Meg Lipke, ‘Tall Yellow Fragment,’ 2014, fabric dye, acrylic and beeswax resist on muslin sewn over polyfill, 25 x 19 x 2 inches
The making of the sculptures was an outgrowth of Lipke’s paintings: shapes resembling heads were beginning to appear in the work. After coming across vintage millinery forms, she decided to use them as foundations for the sculptures. These hybrid works draw not only craft traditions but are also inspired by Lipke’s family history. Her mother is an artist and so was her grandmother, who made weavings and paintings. Her grandfather owned a textile factory. These connections to the past are as important to Lipke as questioning what a painting can be.
Meg Lipke has had numerous solo and group exhibitions. She received a BA from the University of Vermont and an MFA from Cornell University. She lives and works in Ghent, N.Y., and Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Jeff Bailey Gallery is located at 127 Warren Street, Hudson, New York, 12534. Gallery hours are Friday – Sunday, from 12-6 and by appointment. For further information or images, contact the gallery at info@baileygallery.com or 518.828.6680.