FIRST EXPRESSIONS

VIVEZA is pleased to present the works of Casey Curran and Mattie Iverson, two new artists, handpicked from this year’s BFA show at Seattle’s renowned Cornish College of the Arts. Both debuting talents offer innovative works of art that exemplify VIVEZA’s aesthetic of "the sublime nature of complex systems."

ON EXHIBIT: August 2nd – September 3rd, 2006
Reception on Friday August 4th, 6 – 10 PM.  Curran and Iverson will be present.

A Turn of a Crank by Casey Curran
Portfolio | Biography

Through Casey Curran’s mechanical manipulation of texts, the surviving symbols of great literature come alive through the viewer’s interaction with Curran’s playful pieces. Turn a tiny crank and kinetic energy breathes life into the skeletal framework of Melville’s great white antagonist, Moby Dick, or sends Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet spinning toward their fate.

Using the books themselves as the base, Curran creates a crank-operated mechanical allegory out of wood, wire and twine that emerges, sinks and moves throughout the text — allowing the meaning of each work to literally rise off the page. Having shaped today’s artistic and social conventions, timeless novels take on new meaning through this complex conversion.

“When people interact with my art I want them to question their relationship to these texts and books in general,” Curran said. “Sung Tzu’s Art of War completely changed how wars were fought and rulers ruled and now it’s used by CEOs to develop business strategies. I want people to consider how these texts are used in society and whether or not they should be used in such a way or used at all.”

Curran scours bookstores and archival collections in search of a text that speaks to him. It’s a journey of inspired introspection as Curran seeks a window to the past that he can reopen to a contemporary light. It might be a text so influential that its lessons are tantamount to gospel, an obscure text that has slipped into archaism or a beautifully bound volume that begs to be explored.

“We can look at the text of any book and see the wealth of information contained in the writing, but in addition to the writing we can see a structured assembly of signs,” he said. “It is the values we place on those visual arrangements that describe the meaning of the signs. Meaning thus evolves from meaning.”

Curran recently graduated from Cornish College of the Arts with a bachelor of fine arts degree.
 

Soft Focus by Mattie Iverson
Portfolio | Biography

Mattie Iverson, a debuting VIVEZA artist, presents textured memoirs of vast and surreal landscapes through the filter of her mind’s eye. Her current work evolved from photographs of her travels to East Africa, specifically Kenya and Tanzania.

“I was obsessed with the feel of the skies, the bands of lines making up the horizon, and the trees that connected the two,” Iverson said.

Using only her palette knife, Iverson scrapes her oils into the crevices of the rough, wooden surface of her panel medium — closing the distance to her memories, as if to capture them in something tangible before they slip out of focus.

Synthesizing her experience in photography and oil painting, Iverson creates works that reference the expressive power of the lens while indulging the rich texture of layers of sculpted oils.

“Sometimes there are things that can only be seen or felt through a soft focus,” she said. “Feeling a sense of greatness, and of a peaceful balance, I capture the essence of those experiences in these textural memoirs.”

Iverson portrays a world, slightly out of focus, bouncing between experience and memory, that is given harmony by the raised, vertical ridges of paint that unite each overwhelmingly vast landscape.

Just as the art of Piet Mondrian espoused the harmonic effect of vertical and horizontal intersection, Iverson’s art suggests the peace that can be found in the intersection of land and sky.

Iverson recently graduated, Summa Cum Laude, from Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts with a bachelor of fine arts.

All work, artist statements, and biographies can be viewed online at www.viveza.com.
 

    2604 Western Ave, Seattle, WA 98121      206.956.3584      www.viveza.com      gallery@viveza.com

Located in Seattle’s lively Belltown neighborhood, Viveza offers access to a wide variety of exceptional contemporary fine art in an exciting and stimulating setting. We make it easier and more enjoyable for people to acquire contemporary fine art for their homes or business.