The Laundromat is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculpture by Maiko Shioda and Joe Protheroe. Both artists are concerned with an interplay between dream worlds and reality.

In assemblages, drawings, and sculpture Shioda employs imagery from observation, imagination, and dreams. Animal imagery is a recurring theme in Shioda’s work, with each animal symbolizing different emotions or ideas. She makes her work from paper, graphite, charcoal, tea, thread, and hair in a limited palette of white, ivory, cream, gray, and black. The work is both ephemeral and vital, emerging from a rich inner world.

Shioda was born in Kyoto, Japan, and lives and works now in Saitama and Tokyo. From early childhood she has felt a strong connection with animals. She studied art at Temple University Japan, an American school where she found that expressing herself in English as a second language became an important part of her artistic identity.

Joe Protheroe makes large paintings of his studio at night using black paint on a white ground. He starts his paintings by observing innocuous studio objects, such as boards or mirrors, but soon they take on lives of their own. Windows and drawings in the studio become portals into other realities. Surreal mountainous landscapes are visible through the windows. The paint becomes a living force in his work, sometimes depicting inanimate objects and sometimes oozing through the painting’s space as shadows or mysterious puddles.

Protheroe is a Brooklyn-based artist. He grew up in Columbus Ohio, where he graduated from Ohio State University. He went on to receive an MFA in painting from the Tyler School of Art in 2006.

The Laundromat is an artist-curated exhibition space.