Overview
Contemplating time, movement, human relationships, and the interplay of environment and emotion, the four artists featured in Transformer's Daytrippers exhibition - Ryan Hill (New York, NY), Heide Trepanier (Richmond, VA), Bryan Whitson (Washington, DC), and Kate Woodliff (Richmond,VA) - present visual explorations that reflect physical, mental and spiritual journeys, both imagined and real.
Painting subtle yet compelling scenarios, Ryan Hill's B(l)oom Series in gouche, paper and pencil rubbings is a group of small, dissimilar drawings that draw upon botanical illustration, organic design, erotica, old cartoons and modernist ideas as a way of creating tension between the process of flow and geometric certainty. The works are unified by a theme of blooming in a time of restraint. The artist sees these works as quietly performing themselves.
Attempting to come to conclusions about herself and her surroundings through imagined scenarios and false environments, Heide Trepanier's beautifully lush abstract paintings look into worlds of controlled drips, odd prosthetic objects and comic-like swirls, where the autonomous markings of the past adopt anthropomorphic characteristics. These elements playact war and anxiety, ecstasy and joy. Through these paintings Trepanier creates non-linear narratives through the actions of abstracted forms, where drips eat each other and exist in a poetry of plasticland.
Using photography as a way of illustrating and externalizing ideas, emotions, and moments, Bryan Whitson's black and white imagery catalogues and indexes both what he thinks about, and when he thinks. Similar to keeping a diary, Whitson's photographs provides both others and himself a document of an existence and the passage of time.
Through the use of paper, print and plaster, Kate Woodliff's installation work explores modern-day families as subcultures within themselves. Investigating cycles of life, the construction and destruction of relationships, and physical being, Woodliff finds inspiration in simple but often vital life functions that are frequently taken for granted. Incorporating solely black and white materials, Woodliff's sculptural creations work to convey the perception of family dynamics, each with its own story and pace.
