OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, September 2, 2011, 5 to 8 p.m.

FIRST FRIDAY RECEPTION: Friday, October 7, 2011, 5 to 9 p.m.

1708 Gallery is pleased to present its juried biennial exhibition, FEED2011, featuring artists Kyan Bishop (Washington, DC), Larissa Borteh (Brooklyn, NY), Shawn Huckins (Middleton, CT), Guy Nelson (Brooklyn, NY) and Ruby Wescoat (Greensboro, NC). 1708 Gallery will host an opening reception on Friday, September 2 from 5 to 8 p.m. and will feature a talk with the artists at 6:30 p.m., complimentary hors d’oeuvres, and a cash bar. The exhibition will remain on view through Saturday, October 22.

Jurors Lauren Marinaro, Assistant Director at Zach Feuer Gallery, NY, and Elizabeth Schlatter, Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the University of Richmond Museums, VA, selected the five finalists from 338 national and international entries. Each finalist will exhibit multiple works in FEED2011 and will receive an honorarium of $1,000.

JUROR’S STATEMENT:

With an international juried show, the variety of ideas, media, and talents evident in the submissions is practically assured. But in the case of FEED2011, we were excited to see so many artists deeply engaged with very focused approaches to making art that were thoughtful and skilled. This final group of 5 was quite difficult to determine, which reveals not just the complexity and sophistication of the artists’ work but also our own subjectivity as jurors. We hope the exhibition itself engenders conversations about themes such as personal and collective introspection, popular culture, and craftsmanship, among others.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Kyan Bishop’s Critical Balance: essential in small quantities, harmful in excess is a site-specific installation composed of accumulations of salt. Through the use of repetitive and simple forms, Bishop explores themes of space, time and our rapidly changing landscape. Her work demonstrates an “interest in constructive processes” and “creates a visual language that is unified by a sense of order and stability.”

Born in South Korea, Bishop received an undergraduate degree from Denison University in Economics and Spanish and a Studio Art degree from Montgomery College. Her work has been included in numerous galleries and alternative exhibition spaces nationwide. She has taught ceramics and sculpture and has participated in several artist residencies. Bishop currently resides in Washington, D.C. with a studio in Brentwood, MD. For more information on Kyan Bishop please visit www.kyanbishop.com.

Larissa Borteh’s paintings and illustrations reflect her intense and frantic process of creating. Her method of “scraping across a surface” results in “a series of allegorical fragments using aggressive strokes and repetitive imagery”. Recognizable features and forms are “displaced and multiplied” as Borteh explores elements of space and time.

Borteh recently earned a BFA from The School of Visual Arts, NY and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions along the east coast. In 2011, she was awarded an Artist Grant and residency at Vermont Studio Center, VT. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. For more information on Larissa Borteh please visit www.larissaborteh.com.

Shawn Huckins’s series An American Revolution Revolution pairs 18th century style American portraiture with acronyms from contemporary social media. Interested in how technology influences what we know and believe and what our founding fathers would make of today’s forms of communication, Huckins juxtaposes letters like “ROFL” over a portrait of George Washington. While his work serves to comment on the “degree of illiteracy that has become the new social norm” it also more profoundly asks the question “has the complacency of our political freedom blinded us to the potential our ancestors fought for?”

Huckin’s has studied at the University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia and earned a BA in Studio Art at Keene State College, New Hampshire. In 2010, he was the recipient of an Artist Fellowship Grant from Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism and the winner of GLAAD OutAuction NYC’s Best Emerging Artist in Painting. His work has been included in several group exhibitions and was recently featured in the solo exhibition, “Can’t Miss Lime” at Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT. For more information on Shawn Huckins please visit www.shawnhuckins.com.

Drawing from both city surroundings and woodlands, Guy Nelson’s sculptures are inspired by “structures, cycles, conflicts, and behaviors found in life forms, from plant to human, and how they interact.” Through the use of both synthetic and natural materials such as polymers, wood chips, deer hooves and gumballs, Nelson’s pieces explores his interest in mimicry, self-preservation, and structural or organic decomposition.

Nelson received a BA in both Sculpture and Photography from Minnesota State University, Moorhead, MN. His work has been shown in multiple exhibitions including recent group exhibitions at Artjail and Brooklyn Artists Gym in NY and a solo exhibition at Soapbox Gallery, also in NY. His work has been featured in publications such as Studio Visit and Line Magazine. Nelson currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. For more information on Guy Nelson please visit www.guynelson.com.

Ruby Wescoat’s representational sculpture demonstrates an appreciation of form. Her inspirations range from “neoclassicism’s obsession with myth, pop art’s focus on the product, and naturalism’s study of the organic.” By casting her work in an environmentally conscience material like cardboard, Wescoat can sculpt just about anything and has developed an ambitious goal “to make portraits of the history of the planet in all its oddity, to get it all in, to pack all that (time /energy) into a single, quiet moment”.

Wescoat received a BFA in Woodworking and Furniture Design from Rochester Institute for Technology, a certificate of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and an MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has received several public and private commissions and has participated in numerous exhibitions including “Art on Paper” at Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, where she currently resides. For more information on Ruby Wescoat please visit www.rubywescoat.com.

ABOUT THE JURORS:

Lauren Marinaro is the Assistant Director at Zach Feuer Gallery, New York where she works with the program of emerging and mid-career artists. The gallery is not media specific and in the last three years has exhibited audio works, video, painting, works on paper, photography, performance, installation, sculpture, conceptual work and painting. She is an adjunct professor at New York University where she most recently taught “Understanding Contemporary Art: The Essential Guide to New Art and New Media”. She completed her BA in Art History at the University of Richmond and received her Master’s degree in Contemporary Art from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London.

Elizabeth Schlatter is Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the University of Richmond Museums, Virginia, where she has curated more than 20 exhibitions, including recent exhibitions of Carl Chiarenza, Andreas Feininger, Hans Friedrich Grohs, Sue Johnson, and Fiona Ross, and the exhibitions “LEADED: the Materiality and Metamorphosis of Graphite” and “Form & Story: Narration in Recent Painting.” As an independent curator and writer, she has organized exhibitions for contemporary art spaces in the mid- Atlantic region, and has authored several articles and reviews for Focus and Photovision magazines, the National Women in the Arts Bulletin, and the American National Biography (Oxford University Press), among others. She is also author of Museum Careers: A Practical Guide for Novices and Students (Left Coast Press, Inc.) and the on-line publication Become An Art Curator (fabjob.com). Prior to working at the University of Richmond she was an exhibitions project director for the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) in Washington, D.C. She has a B.A. in art history from Southwestern University in Texas, and an M.A. in art history from George Washington University.