Contemporary Works by Anthony Luensman and Shawna Guip
Reception to Meet the Artists: Friday, November 2, 2007 5:00-8:00 PM
Exhibition continues through: Saturday, November 24, 2007
The Phyllis Weston – Annie Bolling Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition by artists Anthony Luensman and Shawna Guip.
Internationally renowned artist Anthony Luensman, is a multi-media artist who delights in a wide variety of disciplines, materials, themes, and ideas. Architecture, history, memory and everyday experience may be starting points for Luensman’s curiosity and invention. A playful whimsy helps tame irony and political distaste while a theatric sense of drama empowers his work with poetic potency. In this series of provocative photographs, Luensman underscores the tradition of the male torso with puns derived from “penny” arcades, peep show fetish, River Phoenix and Pinocchio capitalism. This staged-for-the-camera photo series takes a video-like approach to imagery, building a sequence to capture small change(s). Luensman was an artist-in-residence in Sapporo, Japan, and the Taipei Artist Village in Taiwan. In 2000, he received the Ohio Arts Council Fellowship, which subsequently led to a residency at Headlands Center for the Arts in California. Recent exhibitions include: Arenas at Cincinnati Art Museum in 2006, Taipei: Views & Points at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2006, Ersilia at Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, 2004, Eolian at Olin Art Gallery, Kenyon College, 2003, Irato was an NEA-sponsored solo exhibit at Weston Art Gallery, 2002, and Zeloso at Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, 2003, created a suite of interactive sound sculptures. Luensman also has an installation at the 21c hotel in Louisville, Kentucky.
Shawna Guip represents on of Cincinnati’s excellent contemporary artists. Exploring the symbiotic relationship between human beings and the natural world she excels in creating painting, sculpture, and installation. Influenced by nature and the environment, Guip explores the fragility of natural cycles in her work. Through the combination of natural and made materials she suggests an illusory permanence, creating a unique relationship between the found organic and the fabricated synthetic. Confronting one’s perception, Guips work contrasts natural happenings with common objects. Her work is hard-edged and semantic yet atmospheric and natural. Guip earned her BFA in sculpture from the University of Cincinnati and studied at the Glasgow School of Art in Glasgow, Scotland. She has received numerous awards including: the Wolfstein Travel Scholarship, the City of Cincinnati individual artist grant, and a grant from the Ohio Arts Council. The work has been exhibited at the Weston Art Gallery, Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park in Hamilton, OH, Semantics and S.S. Nova, and among others. She also received a major public commission for Nisbet Park in Loveland, OH. Guip served as the studio coordinator for the Visionaries and Voices for self-taught artists with disabilities.
