December-January Exhibition: People • Places • Things featuring Tony Huynh, Deirdre Leber, John Musgrove, Jeanne Vadeboncoeur, and Elena Zolotnitsky
E X H I B I T I O N S T A T E M E N T
Bryant Street Gallery is pleased to present People • Places • Things, a group exhibition featuring Tony Huynh, Deirdre Leber, John Musgrove, Jeanne Vadeboncoeur, and Elena Zolotnitsky. People • Places • Things will be on view from December 3, 2020 to January 15, 2021.
The way we relate to the world has shifted dramatically this past year. Our interactions with each other, objects, and our surroundings seem to be fundamentally changed. With that in mind, it feels important now more than ever before to take time to appreciate the beauty and simplicity of all the elements that make up our environment — even as our relationship to those elements fluctuates. People • Places • Things invites viewers to contemplate those relationships through this collection.
Tony Huynh grew up in the Bay Area and his personal connection to the area is palpable. “These paintings are to understand the interaction of shapes and color through observation, practice and experience. Part of my early memory was living and growing up in San Francisco and the imagery of the Bay Area reveals itself through shared memories, dreams, intuition or an immediate thought prior to the painting.” Huynh’s process plays off of the relationships between colors and shapes, he follows a natural- though often unpredictable- path to the finished work.
John Musgrove also depicts the iconic San Francisco landscape. Musgrove’s approach is less abstracted than Huynh’s, but both possess a kindred appreciation and candor for San Francisco scenery. Musgrove’s paintings maintain a balance of simplicity and grandiosity that elevates his subject matter. Though The City has many postcard-friendly sights, it is the daily life and the ordinary elements that most frequently capture his attention.
Jeanne Vadeboncoeur shares this perspective with her whimsically simple still life paintings. From gummy bears to toilet paper, she focuses on banal items from everyday life in such a way that they feel transformed into elegant and at times mysterious objects. With incisive titles and compositions, Vadeboncoeur’s subjects become humorous, comforting, cheeky — and everything in between.
Elena Zolotnitsky and Deirdre Leber both bring a potency and specificity to portraiture. While both artists are naturally distinct in their own way, they share a special ability to articulate the emotional intimacy and nuance of certain interactions and spaces. Leber and Zolotnitsky manage to make their subjects feel personal and known to the viewer despite their removed vantage point. Leber’s paintings are a dialogue between the seen and the remembered, the planned and the surprised. Zolotnitsky’s are an amalgamation of contemporary line and structure overlaid with light and colors reminiscent of the Old Masters style.
As we continue further in this new era, both individually and collectively, we hope that the familiar scenes offered in People • Places • Things provide visitors with both a comforting reflection of the past as well as a primer for an inviting and hopeful future, rooted in the things we recognize and cherish.
