Beyond Reverie
Leah Aegerter
JONNY ALEXANDER
Raul De Lara
SPENCER HANSEN
ANTHONY PADILLA
Nori Pao
DECEMBER 13, 2023 - FEBRUARY 7, 2024
508 W 28th St
New York, NY 10001
INSTALLATION VIEWS
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
VIEW AVAILABLE WORKS
Anthony Padilla, water falling, under moon rising, 2023 (detail).
Beyond Reverie presents a spectrum of surrealist works that challenge rational norms and open up space for the unexpected. The artists in this exhibition use a variety of processes and mediums—blends of wood and bronze, ceramic and writing, oil and canvas, leather and horsehair, and repurposed fur and brass. They share an affinity for material and utilize the act of making to access the power of the unconscious. The works call upon the investigation of memory, provoking the audience to contemplate the intersection of dream and reality.
Anthony Padilla is a self-taught painter who blends abstraction, realism and surrealism. He uses color and depictions of flora and fauna to transport the viewer into new spaces, ones that reclaim his Latinx identity. Similarly, Jonny Alexander paints surreal compositions that juxtapose landscapes with manufactured objects—blurring the line between natural and industrial worlds.
Multidisciplinary artists De Lara, Aegerter and Hansen explore their chosen materials, in this exhibition primarily wood, with great attention to detail and craft. De Lara’s sculptures depict forms inspired by flora, furniture and architecture. His work asks the viewer to question ideas around immigrant and queer experiences by using a hybrid mixture of Mexican/American cultural references, and function. Aegerter’s work combines traditional techniques in wood, paper, and metal with digital fabrication processes. Her abstract sculptures, inspired by the physicality of landscapes and unique textures of geology, are portraits of the moments her body and her being meld with the world. Hansen uses a natural palette blending wood, ceramic, metal, leather, and repurposed materials to create imaginary characters that ignite curiosity and welcome us into an unknown realm.
For Beyond Reverie, Nori Pao is exhibiting a new suite of poems etched into ceramic tablets. The gesture of combining clay with text grants permanence to a new writing practice, born from cultivating her connection to the unconscious. Although a series, these tablets are inherently unique. The clay records the process of the making and the words become witness marks to experience.
Installation Views
About The Artists
LEAH AEGERTER
Leah Aegerter is an artist working in object-based sculpture and installation. She lives and works in Carbondale, CO, and spends much of her free time exploring the mountains and deserts of the American West on foot and raft. Using a combination of digital fabrication techniques and traditional processes in materials such as wood, paper and steel, her work investigates her relationship to landscape and intimacy with material.
Leah received a BFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017. In 2022 she was named an Aspen Art Museum Artist Fellow. She has participated in residencies at Grand Canyon National Park, Rockland Woods, and Haystack Mountain School of Craft. In 2023 Leah presented Terrene, a two-person exhibition at Colorado Mountain College (Aspen, CO), and Once a River, a solo exhibition in the Alpenglow Gallery at The Art Base (Basalt, CO).
JONNY ALEXANDER
Jonny Alexander is a multi-disciplinary artist based in the California. His practice includes painting, sculpture, installation and holds a BFA in Printmaking. As a product of this generation the application of his work varies including exhibitions, the installation of public art works in the form of murals and commercial collaborations in design and branding. A through line in his work has been observations of nature and human’s interaction with it. Through painting and sculpture he attempts to blur the line that separates the natural world from the manufactured world believing this understanding can lead to a strengthened health in both humans and the environments we rely on.
Jonny has shown works at the Hawaii Museum of Contemporary Art as well as solo exhibitions at Swish Projects and Good Faith Gallery. Further showings include group exhibitions at galleries such as Thinkspace Gallery (Los Angeles), Hashimoto Contemporary (Los Angeles), Cass Contemporary (Tampa), 111 Minna (San Francisco)among others. Public and private murals have been completed across the United States and abroad including California, Michigan, Chicago, Colorado, Mexico and New Zealand. He also has works in the permanent collection of the Janet Turner Print Museum.
RAUL DE LARA
Raul De Lara is a sculptor based in NYC. His practice is rooted in storytelling via woodworking. De Lara immigrated from Mexico to the United States at the age of 12, and has been a DACA recipient since 2012. Growing up in Texas as a non-English speaker, and still currently unable to leave the USA, his work questions ideas around nationality, queer identity, and the immigrant experience. Exploring forms inspired by flora, mask makers, furniture design and architecture, De Lara imbues his sculptures with a hybrid mixture of Mexican/American cultural references, and functions. His research preserves, honors and propels forward traditional uses of wood while combining them with new developments in the global industry of woodworking.
De Lara received his MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University (2019), and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin (2015). His selected awards include the 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Craft/Sculpture, 2023 Art in America Magazine’s Top 20 Global Talent to Watch, Penland Distinguished Artist Winter Fellowship, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency, Haystack Mountain School of Craft Open Studio Residency, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown Fellowship, The National Park Services OCARC Residency, Ox-Bow School of Art Fellowship, a Chicago Artists Coalition HATCH Residency, a Queens New Arts Grant, a New York City Arts Corps Grant, and the International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award.
SPENCER HANSEN
Spencer Hansen graduated from San Francisco Art Institute in 2006 with a BFA in photography. He is an interdisciplinary artist whose imagination and intellect intertwine to create playful art, thoughtfully sourced and constructed. Inspired by the living world, he works primarily with natural materials, hand making art that is the antithesis of our disposable culture. In addition to Spencer Hansen Art, he is the co-founder and creative director of BLAMO.
Spencer resides primarily in Bali when not traveling for exhibitions or chasing snow.
ANTHONY PADILLA
Anthony Padilla is a Native American oil painter based in Brooklyn NY. In his recent work, he explores the complexity and chaotic elements found in nature. Inspired by Georgia O’Keefe, Henri Rousseau and Wassily Kandinsky, Anthony’s work depicts minimalistic and overwhelming close-ups in the kingdom of nature where flora and fauna are sovereigns.
Anthony’s artwork is “to highlight the abstract and surreal qualities of our natural world by using the elements found in nature, specifically the jungle, as a means to do so”. His paintings are forbidden invitations to enter the glorious, yet hazardous, realm of nature in which humanity does not seem to belong. Self-taught, Anthony built his reputation through a meritocratic approach.
Nori Pao
Nori Pao is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of time, memory, the unconscious, and our relationship to the intangible. The foundation of Pao’s practice lies in developing ideas through intense material exploration and collaboration. Employing a variety of methods and mediums—ceramics, sculpture, drawing, writing, photography, and video—Pao uses landscape, location, and ritual to reference the self.
Pao, a 2023-2024 Aspen Art Museum Fellow, received an MFA from Arizona State University and a BA from the University of Delaware. Recent exhibitions include The Art Base, Basalt, CO (solo); the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CO; Albada Jelgersma, Amsterdam, NL; Stellar Projects (solo), New York, NY; SEPTEMBER, Hudson, NY; among others. Past honors include residencies at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CO and the European Ceramic Workcentre (EKWC), Oisterwijk, NL.