Mel Davis and Deborah Zlotsky: Kith and Pine
Barbara Davis Gallery is pleased to announce Kith and Pine, a dual exhibition, opening Friday March 3rd with an artists' reception from 6:30pm-8:30pm at 4411 Montrose.
Kith and Pine explores the simultaneously dynamic and gentle lines of Mel Davis and Deborah Zlotsky. The strong clean edges of Zlotsky's abstracted shapes speak with the bouncing and blurred movement of Davis', instigating a call to consider the tug between what importantly grounds us, and what urgently frees us.
Mel Davis’ abstract paintings are distinguished by being more than a painted object; they create a reality of their own. Davis forms collages from elements derived from popular culture as well as the natural world around her. This source material is used as a first thought and memory aid to compile more fully orchestrated compositions for transposition to canvas. Painted in both vibrant and soft hues that push the limits of physicality and test our perceptions of material, the work is a consequence of replicas of replications, which is faithfully and artfully organized and interpreted by Davis. The aesthetic of fragmentation is inherent in her painting process, adapting a multi-layered, harmonious composition, using singular elements in a medley of styles. For Davis, this intricate system reflects the complexity of navigating information today. At the center of Davis’s project is the question; how do we absorb information and arrange it?
Mel Davis grew up in Montreal, Canada. She obtained her BFA from Concordia University, (1998), and her MFA at The San Francisco Art Institute. She currently lives and works in the Bay Area. Her work has been the subject of exhibitions at Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, California (2020), Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, (2017), Madison Gallery, Lo Jolla, (2016) and Olga Korper, Toronto,(2016). She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Quebec,(2004) The Canada Council for the Arts,(2008,2014) and the Pollock Krasner Foundation Award, (2016).
Deborah Zlotsky creates tapestries fabricated with reclaimed textiles, mostly vintage scarves from the 1960s and 1970s. Each one contains within its palette, patterns, texture, imagery, age, and former use references to the women who wore them. The physicality of the scarves trace the lives of the particular individuals and their wear and tear bears witness to the way the past is located within the present. For her, the designs of the individual scarves are exquisite, but she is more interested in the way combining the textiles embodies beauty, imperfections, and the passage of time. In these “soft paintings,” or tapestries, the transformation of recognizably everyday feminine items, and the vulnerabilities and power behind them, adds to the story of American life.
Deborah Zlotsky received a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship and NYFA Artist Fellowships in Painting in 2012 and 2018. Zlotsky’s work is in a variety of public, private and corporate collections in the US and abroad and she has been awarded recent residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, the Bogliasco Foundation, and the Bemis Center. She is represented by Robischon Gallery in Denver. Zlotsky has a BA in art history from Yale University and an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Connecticut. She teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and lives in the Hudson Valley.
All together, the works challenge each other, fall in love with each other, dream together, fight and make up. In Kith and Pine, we find connection in all our relationships and yearn for what they could be, finding that we attract what we need. The strength of Zlotsky's work finds softness in its communion with Davis', and the free spirit of Davis' work finds roots in Zlotsky's. We can embrace inspiration from the playful conversation taking place within the gallery, playing along and joining in to discover our holistic selves.
