Adriane Colburn + Graham Collins
RIGHT ANGLE

RA is excited to present RIGHT ANGLE, an exhibition of new sculptural and painted works by Adriane Colburn and Graham Collins.  Both artists utilize a species of personal craft to create non-exacting visual forms that reimagine traditions of minimalism and conceptualism. Colburn will exhibit bent wood sculptures that take their cue from mapping environmental and oceanic trade routes, while Collins will exhibit a new series of minimalist paintings upon intricate glazed ceramic substrates.

 

Adriane Colburn’s steam-bent ash sculptures are a vehicle to investigate the invisible lines that shape our lives; from the objects we hold in our hands, the industries that form economy, and the emissions that comprise the atmosphere.  Her work traces and maps the gradients of natural data points such as air currents and sea temperatures, shipping routes that circumnavigate the globe.  Ash is a chosen material not only because it is prized for flexibility, but because it sheds light on material decimated by the Emerald Ash Borer, an insect that came to the US from Asia aboard wood pallets in shipping containers. 

 

Graham Collins uses material approaches and substrates (ceramic, cut and quilted paintings, above ground pools) to broadly reflect on the traps, tributaries and conventions of painting as a primary vehicle for western philosophy. Ever-challenging the ease of viewing an artwork, Collins’ utilizes obfuscation and the viewer’s body movement as tool to experience his work. This movement of the viewer supports Collins’ conjecture that the object itself is secondary to the primary function of viewing the work in space.  Thus, his paintings share the temporal space usually reserved to dance.

 

Colburn and Collins’ redefine the concept of right angles by presenting artworks that defy conformity, inviting viewers to reconsider their perceptions of space, geometry, and dimensionality.