SOUTHFIRST is proud to present “Devil’s Dust,” an exhibition of new paintings by Amanda Friedman and Alissa McKendrick, with a work by Duncan Grant. In the show, Friedman and McKendrick’s paintings speak to one another through a collaborative environment composed by the artists. The exhibition is on view from 21 February – 23 March, 2014. There will be an opening reception for the artists at the gallery on Friday, February 21, 6-8 PM, and a spotlight poetry reading with Rachel Glaeser, Kayla Guthrie, and Sophy Naess held on Thursday, February 27th, 7-8 PM.
Amanda Friedman’s “Thoughtforms,” Thinking in Pictures, Falling in Love?, and Overwhelmed, are irregularly-shaped, patched and colorful objects often over five feet tall, abstractions with manifest emotional states, whose titles and formal qualities disclose personal moods and ideas. Alissa McKendrick’s lush flower paintings, with titles like The Fear That Eats Me (Out) and Through Narrow Openings, attach deadpan, often cynically sexual names to still lifes and screen paintings that seem to have sprung from the fin-de-siècle. The collaboration between the two artists finds resonances in the brightly-colored blues, pinks, oranges and greens of the paintings on display, but also in the psychologically-laden content of the disarmingly whimsical decorative works. A single watercolor by Duncan Grant, the Bloomsbury-era decorative painter best known for his good-looks and flamboyant love life, provides a touchstone for the two-person show.
Amanda Friedman lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated in 2006 with a BA in studio art from the University of Vermont. Since 2009, she has been in numerous exhibitions including those at Tomato House, Eli Ping, and Apartment Show. She was the co-curator of “Vision Quest,” an exhibition at Nicole Klagsburn gallery in 2012, a project which included screenings at Anthology Film Archives. In 2013 she co-founded Essex Flowers, an artist-run space in the Lower East Side. Her most recent project, Because Nothing Ends, an artist’s book, has just been published by Peradam.
Alissa McKendrick is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2007. Her work has been exhibited in a solo presentation at Real Fine Arts, in Brooklyn. Group exhibitions include “The Cat Show” at White Columns, “Sideshow” at Greene Naftali, and “Happy Holidays! Drawings!” at Alex Zachary Peter Currie. Her portfolio of drawings, “Alice Munro,” was recently featured by Sex Magazine. Her paintings will be on view at the Independent Art Fair, New York.
SOUTHFIRST: PRESENTS
DEVIL’S DUST
AMANDA FRIEDMAN & ALISSA MCKENDRICK
With a work by Duncan Grant
21 February – 23 March, 2014
60 N 6th Street, Brooklyn, NY