Working in soft sculpture, paint, and video, three artists explore the repetitious use of colored marks, and how they may (or may not) create a whole greater than the sum of their parts.

“All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things (Heraclitus ~ 500BC). What entity must exist to necessarily interconnect the wide variety of things that inhabit our world? Known as The Problem of The One and The Many, this question has occupied the minds of philosophers and scientists from the Greeks to Einstein. Here this line of thinking is adopted to address the diverse, yet analogous work of three artists.

Derick Melander uses second hand clothing, carefully folded and stacked, to create large geometric configurations. He says, “when I come across a dress with a hand-sewn repair, or a coat with a name written inside the collar, the work starts to feel like a collective portrait. As the layers of clothing accumulate, the individual garments are compressed into a single mass, a symbolic gesture that explores the conflicted space between society and the individual.”

Working with traditional egg tempera, Laura Paulini builds the surface of her paintings methodically, one dot at a time. She says, “due to the evolutionary manner in which the dots are applied, (the work) isn’t fully realized until the very last dot is in place. At that moment, the painting either clicks into place, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, I wash down the panel and begin again. If it does, a very specific visual texture and optical effect are created.

Penelope Umbrico will show two videos, both animated collections of still imagery borrowed from commercial sources. She describes her Honeymoon Suites as, “images taken from honeymoon resort brochures that reveal the constructed notion of romance through marketing. In the context of the honeymoon resort, signifying perfect love and escape, the horizon line actually points to the ultimate un-attainability of both.”