Beau Carey
RMCAD is proud to present Butcher’s Crossing, an installation of recent paintings by Beau Carey. The exhibition will run in the Rude Gallery from May 4 – May 26, 2012.
THE EXHIBITION
Beau Carey’s work has always dealt with the question of how to represent landscape in a way that is both visually engaging and critically aware of important issues concerning land use. While many of his past works are made of simplified compositional elements containing sets of horizontal bands of subtly shifting and layered color, this new group of paintings makes use of much bolder color and compositional choices. With an eye toward the nineteenth-century landscapes of Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt, Carey reconstructs their work through his own aesthetic lens. In Butcher’s Crossing, he references not only Bierstadt, but John Williams’ revisionist western novel of the same title. The blood red, closed and, in places, flat composition echoes the trapped buffalo slaughter of Williams’ text. In Reconstructing Cole, Carey leaves large areas of a sickly polluted pink under-painting as well as graphite construction lines in the sky. A pink orange under-painting peaks through in Reconstructing Bierstadt, contrasting with a playful black line weaving in and out of the painting. All three paintings hinge around waterfalls, which are left unrendered in flat, bright colors. These waterfalls allow Carey to move between passages of abstraction and representation. Such references to the paintings’ construction serve as reminders that all landscapes are culturally constructed and used.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Beau Carey received his BFA and MFA from the University of New Mexico. He has exhibited his work extensively across New Mexico in both group and solo exhibitions. A recent highlight includes the 2010 exhibition, Monday Afternoon at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, juried by Lucy Lippard and Joel-Peter Witkin. Carey, currently a resident artist at Redline, lives and works in Denver, CO.
Reception
Thursday, May 24, 6 - 9 pm
Rude Gallery
Image credits: Reconstructing Cole, 2012. Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in.