SHERMANTIESTABLISHMENTISM
by Gordon K. Sherman
Dagan E. Sherman
Ariel D. Sherman
Brian T. Hutchinson
June 20th through August 9, 2008

(Click on any photo to enlarge)

The Artists' Statements:

Mysteriousness and appointed iconography has always been a foundation of my visual development. My imagery contains a strong sense of place that demands close attention. Manipulation of my “vocabulary” reveals concern for the human relationship to the environment and potential harmful vestiges of culture’s growth and decay. Manifestations of landscapes vistas, microscopic voyeurism and figurative imagery have association with social, religious, psychological and environmental concerns, but are sometimes more cerebral and poetic in nature. I have never consciously pursued and obvious dialogue with an audience, but rather engaged their curiosity to establish rapport with my work in relationship to their experience and history. With that inquiry the viewer hopefully develops some connection to my artistic concerns, intentions and abilities.  Gordon K. Sherman

My current work focuses on fear and anxiety, using the connection between state of mind and physical health as an axis. I have long been curious about the relationship between illness and the fear of illness. The concept of self-fulfilling prophesy is one that comes to mind. These fears that stem from hereditary illness, bad habits and social conditioning, adjust the way I behave. Memories and nostalgia act as connectors between present circumstances and past experiences. It is in this capacity that I associate my atypical experience with health-related issues as a child to my current apprehensions about well-being as an adult. Moments of nervous tension, uneasiness, and anxiety are depicted in my work by reinterpreting my own childhood drawings – rendering previously flat forms in a manner that creates visual tension between two and three-dimensionality.
This sense of unease is heightened by the activation of negative space, which is an integral part of my work. I want the environment in my work to seem boundless, yet confined at the same time. In various ways, I allude to this space by making it an overwhelming force that must be acknowledged within each piece. In a manner similar to Surrealists, such and Tanguy and Dali, I have an interest in creating my own world, which pulls the viewer in and out of my realities.
The reinterpretation and reorganization of my own childhood drawings are also crucial components of my work. I begin with a juvenilely rendered drawing and give it a depth by rendering inherited contour lines in a way that brings the characters to life and gives them personality. It is also in this manner that I recreate characters’ environments, adjusting scale, and generating invented spaces that stem from my individual concerns and paranoia. I use a limed color palette within each piece. These color schemes are no realistic, but rather fantastical – reminding the viewer that it is an imaginary, concocted world they are looking into, rather than a reflection of the realities they might experience in day to day life.   Dagan E. Sherman

As my life evolves, so does my art. Recently I have been inspired by personal experiences as well as the general connectivity of the world an all aspects of life. They layering of materials and techniques present in my work represents the layering that life experiences bring. The visual elements of organs refer to the mind, body, spirit associations and reflect the interconnectivity we encounter daily. I find emotional release in using my hands to create, in hopes that others will feel some emotion in the connections I have expressed visually.  Ariel D. Sherman

I work in a manner that adopts subject matter with a socially conditioned definition. I place an aesthetic value on things within a large category that have a traditionally distasteful, ugly, violent, or avoidant significance of meaning. My own aesthetic vernacular places me at odds with these socially conditioned conventions of what is considered beautiful and what is not.
I aim to reclassify or to suggest a transitive property of their conditioned meanings to all who operate in aesthetic evaluation. I want to examine how the definition ‘ugly’ can become liberated from the things they signify. By imbuing my representation of them in an aesthetically resonant and significantly pleasing way, I will allow them flight from their conditioned undesirability.
In summation: my task is to make the ‘ugly’ a thing evoking of beauty and sublimation at the most; but at the very least to liberate the ugly from the realm of avoidance and disdain.    Brian T. Hutchinson