Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to announce sense of place, a group exhibition featuring work by 17 artists, some new to the gallery and others who first exhibited their work here in the gallery’s early years. As one of the major group exhibitions curated as part of the gallery’s 45th Anniversary year programming, sense of place explores the many meanings of “place,” from specific locations to larger conceptual ideas of what makes a “place,” and the influence of people and place on one another.
Some artists explore the physical aspects of place, as seen in the watercolors by Henk Pander and a new large scale painting by Stephen Hayes, as well as intimate portrayals of the domestic environment in the work of Jay Stern, an artist new to the gallery. Stern and Christopher Rauschenberg observe and depict locations, from the home to commercial window displays, to create portraits of the people who inhabit and interact with those spaces. Meagann Riepenhoff allows the elements of a place, including its climate and fauna, to interact with photographic media in the absence of a camera, creating an impression of the place itself in a given moment.
sense of place also questions where we are now–literally, spiritually, ecologically and politically–and looks back to different points in recent history, as seen through the work of Ed Bereal, Shannon Ebner, Malia Jensen, and an early sculpture by Lee Kelly, July 4th, 1965. Bereal’s collages from the late 1980s and early 1990s incorporate print media, packaging and text to evoke the ever-evolving nature of the place we know as America, while Ebner’s photograph depicts an obscured American flag, an indeterminate image that seems to allude simultaneously to possibilities and unresolved tensions.
This exhibition reflects the long term relationships that the gallery has had with artists including Christine Bourdette, Richard Gruetter, Christopher Rauschenberg, who first showed with the gallery in 1996, 1982, and 1989, respectively, and Elizabeth Leach’s continued interest in the work of new artists to the gallery. One such artist in the exhibition, Ray Anthony Barrett, had a recent show at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and has an upcoming exhibition at The Brick in Los Angeles.
Across decades and media, the artists in sense of place use depictions of places, from the American landscape, interiors, invented places, and political situations to reflect on where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.
