Deborah Barlow & Yizhak Elyashiv
August 31st -September 25th
Dedee Shattuck Gallery is pleased to present Deborah Barlow & Yizhak Elyashiv. The work of each artist goes beyond ordinary classification as painter and printmaker, respectively. Barlow uses multiple materials on her surfaces, which one might see as sparkling “starscapes,” or aerial snapshots of the glowing, uncharted terrain of another world. Her work seems organic and familiar yet has no defined imagery, born of a process that Barlow calls “controlled spontaneity.” Meanwhile, Elyashiv’s controlled mark-making might be seen as the visual mapping of one’s repeated and purposeful movements, or perhaps the documentation of one’s trek across a vast world. His delicate layering of shape, point, and line contributes to a larger harmonious image that could easily represent the mapping of one’s memory, or the scientific graphing of an evolving organism. The artists explore form and movement through the placement of color and line, each creating mysterious and poetic landscapes, inviting the viewer to examine at length and daydream endlessly.
Deborah Barlow
Bio
Deborah Barlow is a painter based in Boston. Raised in the Western United States, her career began in New York City in the 1970s when she had her first solo show at age 25. Since then she has exhibited her work in over 50 solo exhibits in galleries, art centers and universities throughout the United States as well as Canada, Belgium, Italy, the U.K and Ireland.
This is Barlow’s first exhibit with Dedee Shattuck Gallery. Recently she was featured in two museum solo shows, at the Woodbury Museum in Utah and the Morris Graves Museum of Art in California. In addition to curating a traveling exhibit, Under, Above, Everywhere, she is collaborating with poet Todd Hearon and composer Jon Sakata for an art installation and ongoing performance at Philip Exeter Academy’s Lamont Gallery in 2017.
In concert with her studio work and curating, Barlow advocates for artists and creativity on Slow Muse (slowmuse.com), where she has been publishing her writings since 2006.
Statement
At every scale—from the microscopic world within our cells, to the shifting tectonic plates that define our landscapes, to interstellar nebulae—the material universe is constantly evolving and changing. My work emulates these natural processes. Each painting is a record of multiple physical and chemical interactions of my signature materials: powders, metals, pulverized substrates, fluids, and other organic and inorganic elements. Using an approach best described as “controlled spontaneity,” I layer these materials repeatedly, slowly building a visual field that reveals every stage of its making. Each painting is simultaneously surface and depth, process and outcome.
Complex structures emerge unbidden: amorphous, organic forms that are at once compelling in their familiarity and intriguing in their unfamiliarity. As I continue this exploration of how matter creates form, I invite the viewer to share my sense of mystery, wonder, and awe.
Yizhak Elyashiv
Bio
Born in Jerusalem, Yizhak Elyashiv received a BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in 1990 before coming to RISD and earning his MFA in Jewelry + Metalsmithing in 1992. He began teaching art at Rhode Island College in 1995 and has been a member of RISD’s faculty since 2001. Elyashiv’s prints and drawings have been exhibited and collected by the Israel Museum, British Museum, Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Yale University Art Gallery, RISD Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art and Cleveland Museum of Art, among others. He has earned numerous grants and fellowships, including a MacColl Johnson Fellowship from the Rhode Island Foundation in 2007, a Howard Foundation fellowship for visual arts (Brown University) in 2007 and a drawing and printmaking fellowship from the RI State Council on the Arts in 2011. Elyashiv shows his work at Gallery NAGA in Boston, Reeves Contemporary in NYC, the Spheris Gallery, NH and the Barbara Davis Gallery in Houston. His prints have been published by the Tamarind Institute, Island Press, Washington University at St. Louis and Wildwood Press.
