JULY 5TH – 28TH
THE COHESION
A summer group show exhibiting artists from around the country.
OPENS THURSDAY JULY 5TH, 2012 6-10PM
Tommy Cinquegrano
St. Monci
Emily Manalo Ruiz
Courtney Gates
VIEW ARTWORK HERE
The Cohesion features four young artists varying widely in mediums but related in color palette, quality, and relevancy. The exhibit presents a cohesive cross-section of emerging contemporary art from Philadelphia, Portland, Rochester, and San Francisco. Courtney Gates (OR) works in an enthralling and surprisingly lively use of watercolors while Emily Manalo Ruiz (PA) uses textiles to create flags representing an allegiance to the act of making. With acrylic, gouache, and graphite, St. Monci (NY) creates clean and sophisticated bursts of color on calming white backgrounds. Tommy Cinquegrano (CA) collages photography to create puzzle-pieced prints relating to his experiences with gentrification living in Brooklyn, NY. These four artists are rising to the top of their genres and have been selected to show together due to their common strengths in quality of work and beauty in aesthetics from across the country.
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ARTIST BIOS:
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Courtney Gates was born on May 31, 1987, in Akron, Ohio. Before relocating to Portland, Gates attended the Atlanta College of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. She moved to the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) in Portland, Oregon where she obtained a bachelor’s in general fine art. Notable exhibitions include shows at Worksound in Portland, “Off-the-Wall Pin-Up Show” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Atlanta, and Scholastics Show (best in show), Kent State, Ohio. Gates is currently living and working in Portland.
About the pieces in The Cohesion: “The common plant we know of as mold is missing one key ingredient, chlorophyll. This fungus cannot absorb its energy from the sun. It has adapted by seeking its nutrition from external sources, such as overripe fruit. I often see my work as multicellular fungal units, images that grow out of control. Living in the pacific northwest, I do not have many opportunities to absorb nutrition from the sun. I am mold, and art is my rotten fruit. “ – Courtney Gates
Emily Manalo Ruiz (b. 1980) is a mixed-media artist, living in Philadelphia, PA, by way of Goose Creek, South Carolina. Upon graduating with a BFA in Painting & Art History from the University of South Carolina, she moved to experience the pace and culture of the northeast. After dabbling in the fashion and gallery worlds, she taught at various art non-profits & preschools for 5 years; during which she took a major hiatus from art. In that time, she also obtained a certificate in Fashion Studies from Moore College of Art & Design. She assisted David Beck on the piece, MVSEVM, for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and has shown at Philadelphia City Hall, Family Business and Momenta Art in NY. Currently, she is focused solely on making work, and most recently, it is in the form of printed flags made from salvaged materials. She suspects she’s been possessed by the ghost of Betsy Ross, and from time to time, wonders if she should have gone to dental school like her parents dreamed.
“My works included in, The Cohesion, are from the series, 1000 Works Project & Other Flags. They are loosely based on old battle flags and have become a metaphor for personal struggles and the search for identity. They act as a vehicle for communication and typify a sense of vulnerability & strength (both personal & universal), and an allegiance to the self and to the act of making.” - Emily Manalo Ruiz
St. Monci – “I was born here in the states but grew up in Puerto Rico where I started writing graffiti in the mid 90s. After high school I took a crack at art school in upstate New York and I’ve been addicted to painting ever since. I now live and work in Rochester, NY.” – St. Monci.
St. Monci is currently creating work moving towards further abstraction from his younger creative background while working in a smaller format. He says, “I’ve really come to enjoy the intimacy of working smaller, which in a lot of ways, has allowed me to break away from my more traditional graffiti tendencies.” The collection for this show utilizes acrylic, gouache, and graphite on 100% toned rag mat board. The artist builds custom frames mounting the pieces in a shadowbox behind museum glass.
Tommy Cinquegrano “I moved to San Francisco a little over a year and a half ago from Brooklyn, NY. While my day to day consists of using strictly digital mediums in the video game industry, I enjoy getting back to my traditional artist roots whenever time allows. During my time living in the neighborhood of Williamsburg Brooklyn, I was surrounded by constant real estate development. In order to preserve and capture the disappearing landscape, I began to collage personal and found photos of the archetypal buildings that I saw everyday. I then worked with a local screenprinter to produce limited runs of these images. My screenprints were a tribute to the old knitting factory that I called home, and the neighborhood that I enjoyed everyday. Currently I live in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. While the pace of gentrification is not as extreme as Brooklyn, I hope to apply my collage style to capture and preserve the amazingly eclectic victorian, edwardian, warehouse, and working class homes that I’ve grown to know and love.” - Tommy Cinquegrano