“…awareness of how an individual can be impacted by world events imprinted upon her a strong sense of empathic consciousness…for the oppressed, displaced, and marginalized “other.” – MARCIA G. YERMAN for Relevant Times

Rupert Ravens Contemporary proudly presents Displaced / Interventions and Stop Stealing My Face, including paintings, prints and videos by New Jersey artist Grace Graupe Pillard. The Displaced Paintings were created over the past 6 years. There is a chaos of cultural disintegration evident and symbolized by fragmentation of the picture frame through the reduction of forms into unpredictable, flatly colored eccentric shapes which further emphasizes the destruction of the original photographic source. The process of translating and filtering these images involves the seductive beauty of heightened saturated color, scale and texture, which reflects today’s political “pasteurization” of the horrors of war. This body of work is a brilliant example of integrating her passions of: painting, color, collage, photography, construction and reconstruction, reductivism and graphic simplification along with an astute knowledge of history including the plight of human misery and suffering.

The Intervention Photographs began in 2003 focus on the reality of horror and human cost of wars being waged “out of sight” in far away lands. These archival pigmented prints depict images of soldiers, car bombings, explosions, ruins and refugees, digitally embedded into the “hi-res” photographs of the familiar streets and parks of New York City, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, and the New Jersey wetlands. Graupe Pillard poses the visual question; “are you prepared to bring the tragic repercussions of war to your backyard?”, she equally explores the powerful manipulation of the electorate through the “politics of fear.” The implanted imagery often borders on the abstract, with color and patterns heightened to a kaleidoscopic portrayal of the ordinariness of our everyday reality blown apart.

“Stop Stealing My Face” are scaled prints of “life” drawings from the artist’s bedside vantage point which document the final month of the artist’s mother in hospice. Today death and birth are procedures primarily carried out in hospitals (or on the battlefield) where most of humanity is denied witness. In viewing these print images, we are prohibited from encountering the real pencil strokes that occurred in the very room where Else Stern Graupe’s life energy slipped away.

We are disallowed the opportunity to view the genuine articles which Graupe Pillard utilized to connect directly with her mother and instead are presented with sanitized reproductions. Her prints cleverly articulate a process of experiencing reality which is so prevalent in our society, we see but we can never touch, yet, there is a sense that we have encountered.

In Get The Lead Out, Ayre continues an alchemic journey with heavy metal allure and rhythmic enticement. These metalworks, created over the last 10 years, appear minimal but upon closer inspection, we discover her not so subtle metaphor of denial, where objects of desire, lust, emotion and play are ensepulchered within.

Les Ayre is an artist absorbed by the mystification of the buried object. As a result of her extensive travel to ancient tombs, famous crypts, and historic burial sites around the world, Ayre intuitively incorporates a specific energy or aura that gets channeled into the metals she manipulates. The combining and solidifying of both this presentient force and a magically crafted surface produces a radiant, softly glowing quality which ultimately awards Ayre’s works their dynamism.

These lead or gold enveloped artifacts are unique in that they are used to map out what the artist calls an “internal symmetry.” There exists a balance in the work that shifts between architectonic form and ephemeral landscape, one which begins to reveal

Surfactant – A Group Survey

“Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction creamed from the general surface…” —Charles Baudelaire

Adam Brown Caroline Cox Claire Lieberman Eve Ingalls Hubert Dobler Franc Palaia Gae Savannah Gianluca Bianchino German Pitre

J.G. Zimmerman Jeremiah Teipen Pasquale Cuppari Shari Mendelson Shige Moriya Stephen Keltner Ted Victoria Thomas Broadbent William Niemier

Williamsburg Window – Ethan Crenson & Amanda Alic Curated by Front Room Gallery

33 MORE from 100 NJ Artists – Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions

David Ambrose John Atura Bill Barrell Serena Bocchino Caroline Burton Joan Eda Byrd Wei Jane Chir Angela Cockman Nadine Delawrence Suellen Glashausser Gladys Barker Grauer

Roberta Harley Diane Horn Eve Ingalls Jeffrey Joyce Don Kennell Barbara Klein Gary Komarin Maria Lupo China Marks Winfred Mcneill Tony Melendez

Katherine Mojzsis Hiroshi Murata Lorenzo Pace Franc Palaia Dot Paolo Katherine Parker Donna Payton Gloria Rodriguez Marc Rosenquist John Salvest Mayumi Sarai