Press
"Electric Mayhem
Flanders 311
Through May 30
The notion that opposites attract came to mind while considering a compelling pair of exhibitions on view in Raleigh galleries this month. Electric Mayhem at Flanders 311 features three artists each exploring quite disparate paths and media.
Brian Chang produces sumptuous graphite drawings steeped in Surrealism. Chang's considerable expertise with the pencil gives his work visual fascination, and it is easy to become enthralled with his technical expertise and superb draftsmanship alone. An additional allure of his work is the seductive juxtapositions of stunningly rendered portraits and figures often set in precarious and bizarre circumstance alongside ever hovering fantastical creatures.
In Choose Your Own Installation, Lauren Turner has revived the interactive notion of self-chosen story endings as embodied in the Choose Your Own Adventure books from the 1980s. She has mounted individually numbered, cut-and-paste collages connected by an intricate overhead lattice of multi-colored yarn. Viewers are invited (Felix Gonzalez-Torres style) to join in by using the supplied yarn to connect the dots, as it were, between the various collage panels in support of their own chosen narrative. Turner's collages feature characters including various Muppets, fairy tale heroines and superheroes engaged in peculiar dilemmas and often strife-ridden discussions.
Derek Toomes utilizes a graffiti aesthetic paired in this case with notions of desire and the voyeuristic gaze. A member of the Parail Creative Studios collaborative, Toomes displays a wall-mounted grid of small intimate works, each just a few inches square and evocatively layered. Fragments of vintage pinup/ soft-core porn imagery and historical newsprint images are composed in Pepto-pink color overlaid with bold blocky text consisting of various phrases and fragments in Spanish: todo (all), amar (to love), placer (pleasure), mirar (to look). Toomes' work echoes notions of populism, hip-hop, Latino culture and desire, all in a style owing as much to graphic design as street art.
The show is lively and full of energy though it suffers from the same malaise that afflicts many biennials: works so disparate from one another that in and of themselves they have difficulty in supporting a consistent theme. The show's organizers have attempted to counter this by offering it up as a sort of variety show dialectic. If approached with such broad stylistic leeway in mind, Electric Mayhem affords virtuosic draftsmanship, interactive wittiness and persuasive street smarts all in one."
- Delcambre, Dave. Stong Shows at Flanders 311 and Adam Cave, Independent Weekly. May 13, 2009
Raleigh Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 1 print edition, Sept. 2008.
"Flanders curator Lauren Turner consistently challenges local viewers with interesting themes and art from around the country and home..."
- Natale, Michele. Art Picks, The News and Observer. August 8, 2008
Emerging Artist, August 2008, ART XX Magazine
Juxtapoz Reader Art Selection, July 24, 2008, Juxtapoz Reader Art
Flanders 311
Through May 30
The notion that opposites attract came to mind while considering a compelling pair of exhibitions on view in Raleigh galleries this month. Electric Mayhem at Flanders 311 features three artists each exploring quite disparate paths and media.
Brian Chang produces sumptuous graphite drawings steeped in Surrealism. Chang's considerable expertise with the pencil gives his work visual fascination, and it is easy to become enthralled with his technical expertise and superb draftsmanship alone. An additional allure of his work is the seductive juxtapositions of stunningly rendered portraits and figures often set in precarious and bizarre circumstance alongside ever hovering fantastical creatures.
In Choose Your Own Installation, Lauren Turner has revived the interactive notion of self-chosen story endings as embodied in the Choose Your Own Adventure books from the 1980s. She has mounted individually numbered, cut-and-paste collages connected by an intricate overhead lattice of multi-colored yarn. Viewers are invited (Felix Gonzalez-Torres style) to join in by using the supplied yarn to connect the dots, as it were, between the various collage panels in support of their own chosen narrative. Turner's collages feature characters including various Muppets, fairy tale heroines and superheroes engaged in peculiar dilemmas and often strife-ridden discussions.
Derek Toomes utilizes a graffiti aesthetic paired in this case with notions of desire and the voyeuristic gaze. A member of the Parail Creative Studios collaborative, Toomes displays a wall-mounted grid of small intimate works, each just a few inches square and evocatively layered. Fragments of vintage pinup/ soft-core porn imagery and historical newsprint images are composed in Pepto-pink color overlaid with bold blocky text consisting of various phrases and fragments in Spanish: todo (all), amar (to love), placer (pleasure), mirar (to look). Toomes' work echoes notions of populism, hip-hop, Latino culture and desire, all in a style owing as much to graphic design as street art.
The show is lively and full of energy though it suffers from the same malaise that afflicts many biennials: works so disparate from one another that in and of themselves they have difficulty in supporting a consistent theme. The show's organizers have attempted to counter this by offering it up as a sort of variety show dialectic. If approached with such broad stylistic leeway in mind, Electric Mayhem affords virtuosic draftsmanship, interactive wittiness and persuasive street smarts all in one."
- Delcambre, Dave. Stong Shows at Flanders 311 and Adam Cave, Independent Weekly. May 13, 2009
Raleigh Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 1 print edition, Sept. 2008.
"Flanders curator Lauren Turner consistently challenges local viewers with interesting themes and art from around the country and home..."
- Natale, Michele. Art Picks, The News and Observer. August 8, 2008
Emerging Artist, August 2008, ART XX Magazine
Juxtapoz Reader Art Selection, July 24, 2008, Juxtapoz Reader Art
Prices Quoted
Any prices quoted are for an unframed work to be delivered to the purchaser via post. If the work is already framed and the purchaser wishes to have that option, then the price will be raised for both shipping and the piece.
Like indigenous cultures of old, I will barter in lieu of currency. Not so big on the shells, but open to the idea...
Like indigenous cultures of old, I will barter in lieu of currency. Not so big on the shells, but open to the idea...
Biography
With the impending doom of home planet Icsus increasingly evident, Lauren Turner’s birth parents sent their miracle baby – the product of genetic modification and too much Chianti in the lab – to the last safe haven of Earth. Turner was left to fend for herself by drawing strength from the planet’s inner core through her Icsusian tail until Medtalath, the Great Mother Wolf, rescued her from an oncoming lava stream. Suckled alongside her wolf-human brothers Romulus and Remus, Turner enjoyed a youth of feral prosperity. After Medtalath encouraged her pack to spread forth and multiply, Romulus and Remus quickly identified Turner as the dangerously intelligent of the three half-breeds. They checked her power by having her body cryogenically frozen and placed beneath Capitoline Hill. From there, her advanced super-brain could exercise its influence only through the ancient intercoms of papal palaces.
Millenia later, two American excavators unleashed Turner’s corporeal form and took her into society as their adopted daughter. Despite their best efforts at assimilation, she was left with the only path available to social and biological misfits: post-graduate humanities work in Florida. Since then she has been insidiously inserting herself into the Triangle, NC art scene - first as a curator for Flanders Art Gallery and now as an employee at the Ackland Art Museum. In fact, she’s probably near you right now. Watching. Waiting. Biding her time.
Millenia later, two American excavators unleashed Turner’s corporeal form and took her into society as their adopted daughter. Despite their best efforts at assimilation, she was left with the only path available to social and biological misfits: post-graduate humanities work in Florida. Since then she has been insidiously inserting herself into the Triangle, NC art scene - first as a curator for Flanders Art Gallery and now as an employee at the Ackland Art Museum. In fact, she’s probably near you right now. Watching. Waiting. Biding her time.
