MIRRORS OF DESIRE
A group exhibition
On August 24, RJD Gallery in Bridgehampton, New York, will open the new exhibition Mirrors of Desire. According to gallery curator MAGO, the exhibition “includes artists who project their focus on creating art within their own mirrored worlds, surreal, and holding a deep desire for the viewer to coexist in their painterly, and uniquely created, altered physical reality of time and space.” Among them are Mary Jane Ansell, Phillip Thomas, Katie O’Hagan, Harmonia
Rosales, Juan Béjar, Jorge Santos and Jamie Wyeth.
Ansell has always been inspired by “the irrepressible inner strength and spirit of young girls, and in our current climate we have some extraordinary examples of young girls with a clear-eyed grasp of the future, demonstrating more determination and conviction for positive change than their adult counterparts,” she says. “They are the inspiration for [Invincible III].”
Santos’ paintings Night Owl and Swimmer are two from his latest series that mark a return to the artist’s youth in Angola. “I tried to capture the beauty, simplicity and mystery that held me captive then,” he says, “and still holds me captive now.”
O’Hagan’s painting Persistence was based on frustration she was feeling with a personal situation. “I realized I was stuck in a negative pattern that kept me from progressing and led to regular feelings of futility,” she says of the scene depicting a woman attempting to light a candle with a match, over and over again. As the painting came together, she says, “I began to see it more as about determination than futility.”
Now that the work is finished, O’Hagan sees it about her tendency to dig into narratives and fix problems with single-mindedness. O’Hagan explains that she doesn’t always notice other issues that need to be resolved that someone on the outside sees. “In this case the open window behind me,” she says of the work. “This is often how the process works for me. The image comes first and the inspiration reveals itself over
time and evolves as I get more distance.”
According to Thomas, “Portraiture has been a longstanding tradition in painting. I have often used them as a means to describe ways of depicting not just the sitter, but more often, to describe the viewer.” Hunt and Observance, he explains, “deal with not just the ways in which the black figure has been perceived in history but also the newer ways in which contemporary painting has been depicting the subject. Of course, we also have newer audiences and these new ways of discourse have become more integral to the development of the artist/public relationship.”
Béjar’s figurative works, including Desde La Cuna and Embarcados, “trap you, submerge you into a perfect and quiet world, but they disturb you and move you. They are full of lies and truths of feelings which are blatantly hidden.” Each piece has a unique and personal story, with the artist’s technique helping to “express feelings and ironic situations.”
Mirrors of Desire will hang through September 24.