Marinaro is pleased to present its inaugural exhibition, Shaking Hour, new work by Johannes VanDerBeek.
In VanDerBeek’s new works he continues his examination of painting as sculpture and sculpture as painting, establishing a visual vocabulary that works across both mediums. Forms throughout the show are elemental, but act as a net that catches the underlying anxiety of the world in which we currently live and transforms it into imagery. Flowers appear as symbolic figures, emanating vibrations and manic energy. The sense of shaking creates a tension within the markings—in the lines anxious faces appear, the center of a flower can double as an eye; a leaf shape becomes a face.
The show presents a series of sculpted panels beside freestanding sculptures. While each body of work delves into its own set of characteristics, they also play off each other and explore how the thin divide between image and object can be manipulated and compressed. In both, flatness is utilized as a visual field that is built upon in different directions. In the panels, materials like clay and oil stick are pressed into a flat ground of colored resin and lines are etched into the materials, creating a shallow dimensionality. The sculptures are exhibited in front of free standing walls, further emphasizing the sense they have been peeled out of a two dimensional space. While the sculptures relate to the body in terms of scale, they are more symbolic or archaic in the way that they represent the figure. Panels are suspended in the air by bone like supports and the lines and symbols on their surface allow for a flexible range of associations.
An important role in VanDerBeek’s work is to engage the viewer’s relationship to an object. By pushing an object’s materiality, surface, and complexion into a transformed state he seeks to invite the act of looking and introspection and expose a relationship between visual clues and inner dialogue.
Johannes VanDerBeek (b. 1982, Baltimore, MD) graduated from Cooper Union in 2004. His work has been featured in High, Low & In Between at White Flag Projects in St. Louis, A Disagreeable Object at Sculpture Center, Long Island City, National Projects at PS1/MoMA, Amazement Park: Stan, Sara and Johannes VanDerBeek at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College, Personal Freedom, Portugal Arte 10 Biennial and Trapdoor, an exhibition organized by the Public Art Fund at MetroTech. VanDerBeek lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.