Derek Eller Gallery Summer Exhibition

Tuesday, 27 June 2006 13:51

New York City - The exhibition at Derek Eller Gallery features a selection of works primarily by gallery artists, and a few by artists that will be working with the gallery for the first time.  The show includes a mixture of drawings, paintings, installations and video.

Included in this show will be a diptych drawing by Dominic McGill which takes as its starting point the date November 22, 1963 - the day in which President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the author of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, on his death bed with cancer, slipped through the doors of perception with a large dose of LSD, never to return, and Clive Staples Lewis, renowned Christian Apologist and author of The Narnia Chronicles, died from kidney failure.  Taking November 22nd as a triangulation point, Dominic McGill has been trying to chart American history and cultural change through the sixties to the present, in an attempt to answer “how did we get here?”.  The result is two swirling panels of words and images that touch upon every major event in the US's recent history.

In her video, "A Plant Tour", Jessica Jackson Hutchins takes the viewer through a melancholy tour of her house and garden plants shortly after her move to Oregon.  Her sullen descriptive language and explanations lull the viewer into a sad world where plants struggle as hard to survive a difficult move as the humans do.  Plants become both the reminder of an old life and the hope for a new one, mixing joy and regret in their meager forms.

Chris Hammerlein's "Rhein Maidens" splash seductively and disinterestedly in the water and the moonlight.  Their hair flows around them, becoming indistinguishable from the water currents; tangling and becoming treacherous, reminding us of these three beautiful maids' deadly power as Sirens.