Kelly McCafferty + Ryan Turley
organized by Nick Naber
Opening Reception Saturday, January 11th 6-9PM
The Java Project is pleased to present Kelly McCafferty + Ryan Turley, organized by Nick Naber, on view January 11 – February 16 with an opening reception Saturday, January 11, 6 – 9 PM. The exhibition will present a new site-specific installation-based work by McCafferty along with a few of her assemblage works on textile, and new large-scale colored pencil works on paper by Ryan Turley.
Both artists work deals with excess and order. McCafferty employs objects that she collects from her travels all over the world. She is working out ideas of childhood, kitsch, femininity, and the extreme glut of our current post capitalist society. In turn Turley uses stencils and colored pencil to make his detailed and highly systematized works on paper. He sees the use of stencils as a way to create a fabricated exactness in the work, relating to his own understandings of gender roles, fluidity and sexuality.
Both artists eschew typical categorization structures put on their work. McCafferty’s work blends painting, installation, collage, and assemblage into one work. She creates deliberate and precise work that at times is playful and amusing, but upon deeper examination pulls out other concepts that holds a mirror up to herself and to the viewers. Turley’s work also plays with notions of classification. His work is on paper, but reads as painting, or even tapestry. Turley is thinking
about duality. He compares ideas of, the perfect wife, the perfect husband, the perfect home, and geometry which are put into disarray on the page. His work is made without the aid of rulers and grows organically over time with the stencils allowing for imperfection in the process.
***
About the Artists:
Kelly McCafferty is an artist who splits her time between Brooklyn and Miami Beach. She was raised on a Thoroughbred horse farm in Kentucky. McCafferty has an MFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Hampshire College. She has attended artist residencies at Haystack, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Banff Centre and Vermont Studio Center, among others. Recent exhibitions include Geary, VSOP Projects, Spring/Break Art Show and The Wassaic Project. She collects lunchboxes, t-shirts, records, chalk ware, snow globes, salt and pepper shakers, floaty pens, PEZ, dollhouses, + etc.
Ryan Turley is a New York based artist producing work that deals with issues relating to social conditions, sexuality and politics. Turley has completed large-scale pubic artwork in New York, New Jersey and in Minnesota with a Jerome Foundation Fellowship Grant awarded by Franconia Sculpture Park. Ryan has shown in the United States and abroad. He was named a finalist for the Chicago Transit Authority Public Art Project and has completed numerous residencies including The Bronx Museum, I-Park, Connecticut and JustMad Residency in Spain.