Practical Magic
Elise Thompson
Yael Ben-Simon
October 13th - November 5th, 2023
Opening reception Friday, October 13th 6-9pm.
“I think I carry it well”
– Salem the Cat
Practical Magic sets the stage for a two part concealing and revealing act by artists Elise Thompson and Yael Ben-Simon.Thompson pulls the rabbit out of the hat while Ben Simon cuts tradition in half. Both paint windows into other worlds that slip in and out of reality. Like any great magician, both of these artists dissolve our certainty that there’s a trick at play, and suggest that forces of true mysticism are at work.
Venture into Thompson’s timeless portals through an unknown space of eternity. By layering thick crusted paint over top of translucent vinyl, Thompson conjures openings that beckon or deny our entrance, lucid gateways into unknown spaces, where horizon lines melt into skylines. Are we peering out of a window on a cloudy night or standing on the rim of a planet lit by the moon? Viewing the layers of clarity and opacity places us on one side or another of a veil. The texture and color on either side coax us close to gauge what is within our side of the looking glass.
With similar seduction, Ben-Simon’s paintings play with flatness and form in clever, mysterious trompe-l'oeils. The painter culls coveted images from history and places them into new relationships. A country's flag is casually draped across a pink ring. Broken statues sink to the bottom of the ocean while others are drowned in drapery. She foils sharply rendered items (cloth, busts, rope) with other things rendered in graphic simplicity (fists, balloons, beach balls). In the interplay between depthful shadow and shallow flat spaces, the objects and their symbolic value teeter and fall out towards the viewer. But with an illusionist's flare, Ben-Simon freezes the moment just before the object crashes down onto the floor.
A show of rectangular wall work may prime viewers for the familiar, but with your guard lowered Thompson and Ben-Simon perform feats that acknowledge yet ignore the confines of gravity and two-dimensional space. In these environments rules are set but not obeyed.
Elise Thompson (b. 1988, Cincinnati, OH) received a BFA from Northern Kentucky University in 2010 and an MFA at Florida State University in 2016. She attended the Boom Gallery Fellowship + Residency in Cincinnati, OH, in 2015 via an FSU Exceptional Opportunities award and received the Mary Ola Reynolds Miller Scholarship in Visual Arts in 2016. Additional residencies include Vermont Studio Center, The Wassaic Artist Residency, The Maple Terrace Artist Residency Program, DNA Artist Residency, Stay Home Gallery + Residency, and ChaNorth Artist Residency. Thompson has been published in New American Paintings South, Friend of the Artist vol. 8, VAST Magazine vol. 1, and Maake Magazine 14. Recent exhibitions include The Spartanburg Art Museum (SC), The Wassaic Project (NY), 500x (TX), Paradice Palase (NYC), Laundromat Art Space (FL), Westobou Gallery (GA), Soft Times Gallery (CA), Florida Mining Gallery (FL), SPRING/BREAK Art Show (NYC), and Ceysson & Bénétière (NYC). She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Elise Thompson Artist Statement:
Sheer, layered surfaces call on the intricacies of transparency, both physical and figurative. Areas of these wall-bound works showing restraint emphasize the frame and details below, but through varying degrees of obscured visibility with translucent materials. Many attributes can be withheld or disguised through censored effects or outright obstruction when deciphering what is beneath. Gestures made below, between, and above continue to be seen, in some way, all at once. Materials segmented into architectural arches, fields, and nets allude to a desire for control. Also present are perceived or physical voids, which mirror cartoonish mouths or moments of vulnerability. Alongside structural planes and organic passages, the gaps become part of the image while also disrupting and diffusing. References to entrances and exits hint at places to traverse or be barred from physically or psychologically, encouraging the viewer to rove for better visual access, which is not always gained. Clear or muted communication and the history of past moves are explored through abstraction, filtered via a broad investigation of disclosure. Through semi-symmetrical gestures of concealing and revealing, competing tendencies to hesitate or indulge reflect the desire to remain private or explicitly share. The resulting images are often quirky, vaguely referential, and even eerie.
Yael Ben-Simon is an Israeli artist who works and lives in Brooklyn NY. Her paintings explore the fraught relationship between history, tradition and authorship as she “borrows” museum artifacts from bygone eras and places them in imaginative new environments. They have been recently shown with Shelter Gallery NYC, Mad Eye Gallery NYC, Natasha Arselan Gallery London UK, Moskowitz Bayse Gallery LA, Thierry Goldberg Gallery NYC, Chashama NYC, Geary Contemporary NYC, Fig 19 NYC, Soo Visual Arts Center in Minneapolis, Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning in Queens, NY, Hyde Park Art Center and the Zou B Art Center in Chicago as well as in the Woksob Family Gallery in State College PA. Recent fellowships include Elizabeth Foundation of the Arts SIP fellowship NYC and NYFA’s Immigrant Artists Program NYC. Artist Residencies include: MASS MoCA MA, Wassaic NY, Pilotenkueche Artist Residency in Leipzig Germany, SIM Residency in Reykjavik and Vermont Studio Center VT. Her works have been featured in New American Paintings in 2017. She received her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design Jerusalem in 2011 and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute Chicago in 2015.
Yael Ben-Simon Artist statement
I explore fantasy, tradition and ownership in my recent paintings of classical antiquities. By utilizing new ways with which museums showcase their collections, namely 3D models of their artifacts, I am able to give these mythical heroes in stone a new lease in life. In my paintings they are either placed in a setting that is reminiscent of the great still life paintings of the 17th century or in a more playful environment that evokes the contemporary language of ubiquitous digital images. At once whimsical and grandiose, the statues change appearance as well in this humble offer to deal with the anxiety.