FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

MAGGIE MICHAEL
DAN STEINHILBER

 

September 12 - October 11,  2003

KIMBERLY VENARDOS & COMPANY is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition featuring new work by artists MAGGIE MICHAEL and DAN STEINHILBER. Please join us at a reception Friday September 12, 2003 from 6pm to 8pm. The exhibition will remain on view through October 11, 2003. KIMBERLY VENARDOS & COMPANY is located at 1014 Madison Avenue, between 78th and 79th Streets.

MAGGIE MICHAEL’s work has been described as sculptural painting. DAN STEINHILBER’s work has been described as painterly sculpture. This exhibition, the first in New York to survey the work of these two Washington, D.C. based artists, features new paintings, drawings and sculpture.

Reconfiguring ordinary household objects such as plastic spoons and paper cups, DAN STEINHILBER creates mixed media works that stir the imagination and reveal the hidden splendor in the commonplace. A box of household trash bags filled with air is transformed into a giant geodesic blossom. Dozens of hangers, each with its crisp paper sleeve, are dramatically suspended, one on another, from floor to ceiling. Aggregately this elaborate maze of shifting angles and rounded edges is suggestive of a flock of birds or a school of fish; alternatively it is a diagram for a complex genetic code. Interpretation is open in STEINHILBER’s work and all of his pieces are untitled. One is compelled as much by the sculptural energy of his creations as by their conceptual underpinnings.

Directions - DAN STEINHILBER, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition will open at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in September 2003. Currently STEINHILBER’s work is featured in the exhibition Census at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. His work was also included in Art Point, during Art Basel Miami Beach, 2002. Recent grants include a Young Artists Grant (2003) and a Small Projects Program Grant (2002) both from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. STEINHILBER holds a BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and an MFA from American University.

MAGGIE MICHAEL’s abstract paintings are vibrant adventures in action and response. Orchestrating her compositions through a series of spills, lifts and tilts, MICHAEL pours latex paint onto acrylic panels or canvas, building lush seductive surfaces. In her performative approach to painting MICHAEL takes her cues from the materiality and opacity of the paint, letting it sag and nestle into relationships of form and color. Properties inherent to this medium – puckering, bubbling and cracking – reveal themselves while drying and are an integral part of her process. MICHAEL’s paintings have a sculptural quality that often borders on figuration. Bulbous folds and blemishes imitate the nuances of skin. Sumptuous and sexy, MICHAEL’s paintings are rich painterly feasts. Extending on this idea are MICHAEL’s more visually narrative drawings, which reference animation and illustration with their punchy, quirky wit.

MAGGIE MICHAEL’s work will be featured in the exhibition PAINTING! at University Art Gallery, Central Michigan University in October 2003. Currently her work is on exhibition in Census at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. She is the recipient of a Small Projects Program Grant from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Washington. MICHAEL holds a BFA from the University of Wisconsin, an MA from San Francisco State University and an MFA from American University.


Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10am - 6pm. 
For images and additional information please contact the gallery or visit our website
www.venardos.com