press release :: Visual Aides

NEW YORK — Jen Bekman Gallery is pleased to present Visual Aides, eight works on paper by Carrie Marill. Visual Aides is Marill’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.

An opening reception will be held on Friday, March 26th, 2010 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Visual Aides will be on view Saturday, March 27th through Saturday, May 8th, at Jen Bekman Gallery, located at 6 Spring Street, New York, New York.

Marill finds inspiration in salvaged “visual aides,” originally used in classrooms of the 1950s, which she reproduced and repurposed with gouache and modern influence. Marill’s edits and additions update the 60-year-old teaching tools’ focus on farming and industry, highlighting technological advances and the consequential commercial and environmental issues. The resulting works are an often-humorous guessing game; the viewer is challenged to find contemporary intrusions in the landscapes. Once discovered, Marill’s inclusions cleverly underscore the ways that we react as a society to establish a moral compass as things change. The clashes between past, present and future models for living reveal and question the nature of progress.

Of Marill’s work Allison Arieff, of By Design for The New York Times writes:

What at first seems a bucolic glimpse into agrarian idyll reveals itself to be a mind-boggling mash-up: equal parts pre-industrial arcadia and post-apocalyptic terrain… the essence of Marill’s message: we remain deliberately oblivious in order to survive. But for how much longer will that strategy work?

Carrie Marill was born in 1976 in San Francisco, California. She graduated from San Francisco State University in 2002 with a BA in painting. She attended Cornell University in 2004, where she received an MFA in painting. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Miami, Texas and Arizona. Marill’s work has been published in New American Paintings, Wired Magazine, Southwest Art, The New Times, LA Weekly and LA Times. Marill has limited-edition prints available on 20x200.

Jen Bekman Projects
Jen Bekman Projects comprises three businesses: 20x200 offers curated, limited-edition prints at ridiculously affordable prices. Hey, Hot Shot! is a critically acclaimed international photography competition, which discovers, recognizes and promotes photographers at all stages of their careers. Jen Bekman Gallery, the flagship of JBP, exhibits photography, works on paper, paintings, and mixed media.

Visual Aides is at Jen Bekman Gallery, 6 Spring Street, New York, New York.
Hours: Wednesday–Saturday, noon–6 p.m. or by private appointment
For additional information and images, email press@jenbekman.com or phone 212.219.0166.

Download the press release (pdf).

press release :: Doing a Lot with Very Little

NEW YORK, NY – Jen Bekman is pleased to present Doing a Lot With Very Little, an exhibition of new paintings by Carrie Marill. Her work has been exhibited across the United States and featured in publications such as New American Paintings, Wired Magazine, and The New York Times. This will be her first solo exhibition in New York City.

The exhibition will be on view Friday, September 12 through October 18, 2008 at Jen Bekman Gallery, located at 6 Spring Street, New York, NY, 10012. An opening reception for the artist will be held on the evening of Friday, September 12 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at the gallery.

Carrie Marill’s new work is an intimate series of paintings where houseplants and color studies cohabitate. In these jewel-like paintings, she investigates natural systems from the organic to the mathematical, permeating the domestic world with surprising elements of abstraction and optical illusion.

Marill paints houseplants with delicate precision, showing nature in isolated groupings. Her color studies mimic biological organization systems, exploring mathematical stacking principles and organic patterns of accumulation and flow. She gives motion to the page through repetitive forms; lines begin to optically move in the shadows, suggesting growth in unlikely places.

Jen Bekman comments:

The quiet, delicate presence of her humble houseplants reminds me that the most mundane things can anchor a moment and define a memory… In detailing the intricate geometry of branches and leaves and noticing the way the plants seem to stretch together towards an unseen sun, she is creating a richer connection to the time and the place that she remembered to see them. She's taken some plants, and turned them into those plants, the ones that were there when she was, if you will, doing a lot with very little.

Doing A Lot With Very Little at Jen Bekman Gallery, 6 Spring Street
Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, noon-6pm or by private appointment

For additional information and images email press@jenbekman.com or phone 212.219.0166