OPUS Project Space is pleased to announce of Donna Moran’s solo exhibition, Configuration, Transformation and Assembly, at OPUS Projects, 526 West 26^th Street #705, February 6 - March 1, 2014. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, February 6, 6-9pm. Gallery hours are Saturdays 11-5 and by appointment.

 

"I spent my recent sabbatical year re-imagining past work until Hurricane Sandy forced me out of my studio. When I was able to return, the work became reflective of the physical damage created from hurricanes and tornados, and from over-development of the coastal regions of the northeast and of my native mid-west. Last year’s combination of continuing natural cataclysms and man-made opportunities for disasters, deeply affected my perception of our physical environment."

 

Configuration, Transformation and Assembly, and the series Conversations with E. Vila-Matas, are works on paper combining archival digital prints with analog painting interventions. They are a blend of landscape and architecture and were produced between December 2012 and November 2013. My intention is to continue to rescan some of these pieces, allowing changes as the architecture of the past work re-asserts itself as new imagery. The evolving generations of work will continue to include archival digital printing and analog mark making using pencil, casein and gouache paint. The group of small sketches Cosa si Intende per Essere Successo: (“whatever was meant to happen did”), speaks to the experimental nature of my work. They were begun during my artist residency at The American Academy in Rome and are meant to be finished pieces as well as the source of future work.

 

Art and literature intersect. In Dublinesque, Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas speaks through his protagonist Samuel Riba: “Five elements he considered essential for the novel of the future. These essential elements were intertextuality; connection with serious poetry; awareness of a moral landscape in ruins; a slight favoring of style over plot; a view of writing that moves forward like time.”  “He realizes that…he will have to choose between flicking through a book- that is remaining heroically in the Gutenberg age- or else surfing the net and entering the digital world.  For a moment he feels like he’s right in the middle of an imaginary bridge linking the two epochs. Moran’s work dialogues with Vila-Matas’s ruminations, and expands them into the visual realm in a continuing dance of language and art.

 

Configuration, Transformation and Assembly and Conversations with E. Vila-Matas, are a series of archival digitally mastered works on paper, with analog interventions that explore interdisciplinary practice. Translating a history of personal mark making combined with visual imagery of landscape and architecture, the work investigates the power of nature to change man-made decisions.

 

A special thanks to Paul Petrocelli for his continued support in the digital labs at Pratt Institute.