Mind the Gap
November 21-January 3, 2009
Artists' Reception: Friday, November 21, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO — Eight Modern is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, Mind the Gap.

“Mind the Gap” is a ubiquitous warning to passengers on the London Underground to watch their step and avoid a potentially calamitous fall between the platform and the train. It represents a simple warning, a reminder to follow the rules and play it safe. But what of those who carelessly — or defiantly — do not mind the gap?

Mind the Gap is curated by Cyndi Conn, Visual Arts Director for the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe. Conn selected six artists who dwell in the gap between fact and imagination: Rita Bard, Jennifer Hoag, Fay Ku, Katherine Lee, Kim Russo and Tuscany Wenger. These artists create distinct mythologies of striking, strange creatures, disjointed everyday imagery and stories half-told in rebellious, hallucinatory narratives. By choosing to work in the gap, rather than on either side of it, they explore and enlighten the tenuous space between transparency and mystery, humor and tragedy.

Rita Bard works in watercolor on paper, piling up and paring down everyday objects — chandeliers, couches and creatures — into striking, ludicrous and enchanting scenes. Bard touches on philosophical and moral issues with tongue in cheek.

The photographs in Jennifer Steensma Hoag's “Nature of Invasion” series are visual fictions produced by digitally importing deer into urban and suburban environments, prompting viewers to wrestle with their assumptions about the place and function of animals in the modern world. As the artist says, “Landscape is a human construct, created as much within us as around us.”

Born in Taiwan and raised in America, Fay Ku is a self-described outsider, whose inspirations range from the morbid Chinese folk tales of her childhood to contemporary film and literature. Simultaneously macabre and whimsical, her beautifully-executed drawings are enigmatic, dreamlike and delightfully wicked.

Katherine Lee's paintings transform familiar settings — a motel swimming pool, a country road, an empty room — into surreal scenes at once familiar and unnerving. They are spaces of suspended action and endless possibility; they are memories without an owner.

Using watercolor on paper, Kim Russo creates atmospheres of confused nostalgia and failed utopias. Her work shows movement thwarted, potential derailed and the unexpected humor, beauty and opportunity that result from change, loss and suffering.

Tuscany Wenger creates soft, three-dimensional sculptures. She explores nature and the universe, underworlds and histories, making what she calls “creatures and objects to comfort and defend.”

Eight Modern is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For further information and image requests, contact Jaquelin Loyd at (505) 995-0231 or info@eightmodern.net