Upcoming Exhibitions
Victoria Haven | Under The Net: When Atmosphere Becomes Form
May 1 – June 1, 2024
Opening Reception: Wednesday, May 1, 2024, 6-8PM
Under the Net: When Atmosphere Becomes Form is Victoria Haven’s second exhibition with Planthouse Gallery. Comprised of 12 new works on paper and one site-specific wall drawing, Haven employs a rigorous engagement with line and ink washes in an attempt to reconcile form and atmosphere through abstraction.
Her show title, Under the Net, is borrowed from a favorite Iris Murdoch novel that grapples with the philosophical notion that there is an unbridgeable gap between language and reality that can only be expressed in nonverbal ways. Haven’s new drawings, called The Dialogics operate as perceptual spaces that invite the viewer to bridge that gap.
For nearly three decades, Victoria Haven’s practice has revolved around drawing, which she has explored through works on paper as well as site-specific interventions on the walls of studios, museums, and galleries. This recent body of work expands into new territory as the angular geometries of past work are re-considered through a process of bending, twisting, and shaping inky lines to create these divergent, enigmatic forms.
Victoria Haven (lives and works in Seattle, WA) received a BFA in Painting from the University of Washington; Seattle WA and an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College/University of London, England.
Haven is the recipient of several awards and residencies including MacDowell Colony, NH, Mass MoCA, Rauschenberg Residency-Captiva FL, Pollock Krasner Fellowship, The Neddy Award; Art Matters Grant and a Betty Bowen award from the Seattle Art Museum. Selected collections include Seattle Art Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Gates Foundation and Portland Art Museum.
Victoria Haven, Dialogics 1 (sharkskin), 2023, Ink on paper, 17 1/2 x 22 1/2 inches
Matt Magee | Inventory
May 1 – June 1, 2024
Opening Reception: Wednesday, May 1, 2024, 6-8PM
A few years ago I saw a collection of 19th century Mexican retablo paintings. Retablos are devotional images made primarily to be installed behind the altar of a Catholic church. I was especially interested in the small scale of these paintings, their brightly painted subjects, and the fact that they were painted on found tin. I explore a variety of media in my practice, including aluminum cans and detergent bottles, which I use to make sculptures and collaged reliefs. I began sourcing small steel and aluminum sheets from metal supply shops and hardware stores. I have created a body of work inspired by the idea of what retablos are and their function and reliance on historical imagery. Integrating imagery from past and present sketchbooks, I have created small, richly colored paintings about devotion to practice and the singularity of a personal way of seeing. In a broader sense, the imagery relates to mid-20th century geometric abstraction, modernism, 1960s Minimalism, and Postminimalism with an emphasis on stacking and repetition and a language borne from years of looking, observing, and absorbing visual imagery from social media, museums, the news, travel, and nature. As substrates, steel and aluminum sheets provide a seamless surface, smooth and tractable to the point of being fluid, generational, and timeless.
–Matt Magee, 2024
Matt Magee is a contemporary artist who has dedicated his over four-decade career to experimenting with abstract and conceptual art practices. Best known for his minimal abstract geometric paintings, sculptures and prints, his work explores language symbolically with an emphasis on repetition and nods to art historical precedents.
Magee holds an MFA from Pratt Institute and a BA in Art History from Trinity University. The artist was awarded two resident fellowships (2007 and 2015) at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, a New York State Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2002 and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1991. His work is found in the collections of the Tucson Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Phoenix Art Museum, JP Morgan Chase Collection and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, among many others.