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Indepth Arts News:
"Judson Vereen: Calm in the Catastrophe"
2006-03-15 until 2006-04-15
Arts without Borders Gallery
Hapeville, GA,
USA United States of America
Arts Without Borders is pleased to present an exhibition of approximately 30 works of art consisting of paintings, sculpture, and poems by Judson Vereen in March 2006. The exhibition will concentrate on Vereen's stylistic exploration of 2004-2006 during the artist‚s residency in Brooklyn, New York. Focused on the artist‚s abstractions, the show brings together a bold and excitingly rich body of work, with an unexpected range of influences. Such a grouping of work reveals Vereen's persistent fascination with his surroundings, a tireless work ethic, and a mad scientist's sense of exploration and self- investigation.
Among mostly paintings, the show features selected poems (Published in MaryMark Press, and Paradox Press), an antique lamp with a plastic gun affixed to its top, as well as an installation of several Daily News Editions, accentuated with strokes of oil paint.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Vereen moved to New York City to pursue a career in painting in 2004. While settling in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, not only one of New York‚s notoriously and historically rough neighborhoods, but also one of it‚s most diverse, Vereen created a vivid body of work illustrative of the harsh, but inspiring environment, saturated with crime, noise, heat and culture-clash. Although bouts with violence, isolation and confusion were common, Vereen recalls these days as "Some of the most interesting and exciting times of my life".
The paintings realized in Brooklyn, in retrospect, echo the dark tones surrounding Vereen and expose an introsp! ective, inquisitive artist, relentlessly creating work as a form of diary-keeping, especially during spells of despair and isolation. One may juxtapose the artist's opaque palette with the tones surrounding him; the complexions of the exotic people, the dark brownstones that populate virtually all of the inner Brooklyn neighborhoods, and Brooklyn itself: dark, mysterious, claustrophobic and certainly unfamiliar to a young painter who lived his entire life in rural Georgia.
Upon viewing these paintings, one may witness the way in which the artist managed to involve the world around him, incorporating his environment into even his most abstract works.
Vereen creates work in the spirit of the flanuer, not withdrawn from his new environment, but captivated by it. Vereen saw his new surroundings as a Byzantine city, "Overwhelmed with religion, violence, and optimism, a place that was able to contain all the curiosities and challenges, as a concentration! of people that we all must answer to, eventually, as individuals".
The artist is 19 years old. This will be his first one-man exhibit.
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