Saturday, July 14, through Sunday, September 9
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
From July 14 through September 9, new works by a prominent Iowa City artist will be on display in the Figge Art Museum's Laurel Farrin: No Particular Order, a collection of abstract, geometric, and frequently humorous images by a talent widely praised in publications including the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, and Time Out NY.
Splitting her time between Iowa City and New York City, Farrin mixes elements of hard-edge painting with references to pop culture in her paintings, drawings, and videos. By pulling inspiration and techniques from various sources, Farrin explores how viewers relate to abstract forms. Farrin’s paintings confound the viewer with visual riddles, contradictions, and comic juxtapositions, all the while convincing the viewer to feel sympathy for abstract shapes.
In Farrin’s work, geometric forms take on a humanlike presence while performing Sisyphean tasks. Some of these struggles are documented in videos that show the assemblages being thrust into motion by the wind. The same breeze that allowed these figures to move inevitably thwarts their struggle by blowing them over, leading to an endless cycle of fruitless gestures. Similar abstract figures inhabit seemingly empty frames in Farrin’s paintings. When these frames are combined they seem to form a comic strip that the viewer must piece together. Viewers are led to believe that if the frames are assembled correctly, the punchline to the joke will be revealed – if one even exists.
Laurel Farrin is an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa. She received a BFA from Ohio University-Athens and an MFA from the University of Maryland, and has oftentimes served as an artist-in-residence: at the Roswell Museum and Art Center in Roswell, New Mexico; at New York's Millay Colony for the Arts; and at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Farrin also received an individual artist grant from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities.
Regular museum hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (open until 9 p.m. on Thursdays) and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m., and for more information on Laurel Farrin: No Particular Order and other Figge exhibits, programs, and events, call (563)326-7804 or visit FiggeArtMuseum.org.
