Spillway Collective presents Escape Artist, an exhibition offering an alternative reality to the current state of affairs. Artists Sarah Gamble, Jen Hitchings, Kimi Pryor, and Stoney Sasser create worlds devoid of Twitter fights, hatred, and the mundanity of the every day, and instead delve into an area of mysticism, ritualism, and the simplistic. The paintings and sculptures on view offer visitors the idea of another world, a world to which they can escape.
Sarah Gamble's work delves into the otherworldly. Images seem as though they are written in the stars, making each figure feel god-like, holy. Eyes, detached from their human, hover in blackness, watching the viewer but eliminating their ability to grasp onto anything tangible.
The worlds that Jen Hitchings creates are a nod to the familiar, such as family gatherings and camping trips, and yet are ungrounded by her use of extreme color relationships. This manipulation of color leads the viewer's physical recognition into a psychoanalytic interpretation of what's happening. With these paintings, the viewer can visit alternate states of psychologically seeing.
Kimi Pryor's paintings are both oddly specific and devoid of reference. Paintings may include a figure, but that person is often singular and melting into a surreal and strange surrounding. The viewer may be able to grasp onto one or two signifiers of the everyday, an arch or a raft or a piece of nature, but is left wondering what happened to the rest of the world.
Stoney Sasser's three-dimensional works, hovering in space are a whimsical attempt at an alternative reality. Sea anemone-like creatures swim in swirls of color and wonder. Floating like islands in the sky, Sasser's works are worlds of imagination. These works utilize simple materials from this world, to create radical assemblages, taking the ordinary to the extraterrestrial.
This exhibition offers the idea of another world, a world to which the viewer can escape. On view from October 8th for POST Northeast through November 4th. Opening reception on October 12th from 6-9pm.
Spillway Collective
1400 North American Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
