Johnson County Community College
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913-469-8500
Julie Haas, Associate Vice President, Marketing Communications, ext. 3120
Peggy Graham, Writer, ext. 3425
Tyler Cundith, Sports Information Director, ext. 3122

11/23/2009
Story, Bruce Hartman

Aberrant Abstraction opens at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art

Aberrant Abstraction featuring Keltie Ferris, Chris Martin, Cordy Ryman and Agathe Snow opened Nov. 20 in the first-floor galleries of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College. The exhibition will be on view through Jan. 31, 2010.

The exhibition highlights four contemporary artists and their varying approaches to abstraction – often using unorthodox materials, blurring the distinction between painting and sculpture, and referencing performance and site specificity.
 
Ferris’s paintings appear as though they originate far from the computer screen, and yet their surfaces seem predicated on a kind of Windows-age logic. Passages with varying palettes and textures hover next to, under and over one another like different software programs, all open at the same time and yet designed to perform different functions.
 
According to artist Martin, “I grew up in Washington, D.C. listening to black radio and Motown music. I loved James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, The Temptations, all that stuff. I actually decided that I was an artist, at age 14, while listening to James Brown. When he died, I was surprised how emotional it was for me. I began to take my James Brown records and glue them into paintings. I’ve been taking album covers and using photographs of him in paintings since.”
 
Unlike Postwar American abstract art that was revered for its independence of form, Ryman captures tactile, but not transcendental, beauty. Green Wave (2007) features an array of long boards that are set at different angles along the gallery wall, creating both a physical and visual wave of color. Painted in shades of green on the front while hot pink coats the back, this work connects physical movement with a larger abstract idea.
 
New Yorker Agathe Snow’s approach to art is more a way of life than a studio practice, informed by personal circumstance, travel, current events, counter-culture, and a drive to engage with and stamp her imprint on the world at large. Often using objects she’s found on the street, her sculptures reconfigure the detritus of everyday life as deliriously apocalyptic monuments of societal breakdown.
 
The Nerman Museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday; and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. The museum is closed Monday and all JCCC holidays.

For more information, call 913-469-3000 or visit www.nermanmuseum.org.

Admission and parking are free.

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