20/20: RISD MFA Painting

Braden Bandel, Kara Cox, Jarrett Key, Omar Lalani, Josh Meier, Kiernan Pazdar, Madeline Peckenpaugh, Kate Pincus-Whitney, Chris Regner, and Lukey Walden

Exhibition Opening: Sunday, July 19, 2020

Exhibition Dates: July 19 - August 9, 2020 (online and by appointment)

1969 Gallery presents 20/20: RISD MFA Painting, a 10-person show featuring the work of this year’s graduating class from Rhode Island School of Design’s Master of Fine Art Painting Program: Braden Bandel, Kara Cox, Jarrett Key, Omar Lalani, Josh Meier, Kiernan Pazdar, Madeline Peckenpaugh, Kate Pincus-Whitney, Chris Regner, and Lukey Walden.

With disruptions to the rites of passage that typically accompany graduation, this exhibition will be the first opportunity for the 2020 cohort to present their thesis works, and for the public to see it. A commission of works on paper by all ten artists will debut in the exhibition.

This exhibition features artists working in abstraction and realism, using a wide range of materials from oil paint on canvas to molding paste and pumice on polyester. Many of the artists are using their personal experiences to influence the shape that their work takes, such as Omar Lalani, whose graphic abstractions are rooted in his religious upbringing. His practice orbits around the questions of faith, pleasure, and the phenomenology of emotion. Through an autopoietic process, he prioritizes haptics and color when building, stacking and scraping forms into being. 

Jarrett Key’s practice embodies several modes of production in one frame; integrating sculpture, painting, and performance. Painted in wet cement like a fresco, their current series of paintings depict Black people whom they know in lush, pastoral landscapes. These celebratory images of leisure are in defiance to the cement, which echo limited spaces where Black folks appear in the imagination of others.

Other artists in the exhibition are more process-driven, such as Madeline Peckenpaugh, whose large-scale oil paintings mimic interconnected patterns, light, atmosphere, and pressure found in natural and urban environments. She explores these formal elements through her photography practice, and aims to transform these un-monumental 3D spaces into large-scale, spatial, and monumental paintings. She collapses space yet also opens up deep dimensional sections; disrupting with gesture and weaving in material changes to dodge initial expectations. 

Kiernan Pazdar’s enigmatic paintings begin from a list of contradictions, illusions, and multiple interpretations found in symbolism and common lifestyle aspirations. She often plays with the idea of multistability in perception, generously offering the viewer an image which is known to offer numerous interpretations. Holding a BFA in Textiles from RISD, her extensive knowledge of patterns and design embed their way into her multi-layered paintings.

The common thread amongst all of these artists is the unprecedented challenge they had to overcome in simultaneously finding ways to continue to make their work in the middle of a pandemic, social unrest and economic uncertainty.

Thanks to the following individuals for helping organize 20/20: Nate Carter, Paul Greene and Les Christoffel, Susan and Michael Hort, Jacob Hyman, Robin Lipson, Dan Nguyen, Jennifer Packer, Clara Andrade Pereira, Eran Rothschild, Alec Smyth, Jonathan Travis, Stephen Truax, John Yau and Aaron Zulpo.

20/20: RISD MFA Exhibition is on view July 19 - August 9. Contact info@1969gallery.com. Private appointments for viewing of works until Labor Day.

For sales inquiries, please contact: 

Quang Bao (quang@1969gallery.com)

Madeline Ehrlich (madeline@1969gallery.com)