February 16 – March 18, 2018
Gibbs Street Gallery
Opening Reception and Artist Talk: Friday, February 23, 7 – 9 PM
Mary Anne Arntzen’s recent paintings are self-contained worlds populated with nameable and unnamable forms. Repeating stripes, folded chevrons, and jagged starbursts combine with fleshy, bodily tubes creating, moments, events or interactions, a dialogue between passive and active forms or twisted, organic shapes and hand-rendered geometry. They behave as physical objects; catching light, casting shadows, and weaving through surfaces creating entryways and barriers. At the same time, the space is ambiguous. Differing spaces converge to dominate and undermine each other, creating portals and passageways and suggesting transfer between states.
About the artist: Mary Anne Arntzen is a painter who uses hand-rendered geometry to explore interactions between non-representational forms. Her work has been shown at the Walters Art Museum, School 33 Art Center, Hillyer Art Space, Mary Washington University Gallery, Salisbury University Gallery, and The Arizona State University Art Gallery. She has completed residencies at the Wassaic Project, Vermont Studio Center and Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. She teaches at the George Washington University, and the Community College of Baltimore County and is a member of the ICA Baltimore advisory committee. In 2016 she was awarded the Maryland State Arts Council’s Individual Artist Award in painting. She was a 2017 finalist for the Sondheim Artscape Prize.
