Still
During the last three years, our homes have represented our refuge and fortress. They have protected us and provided us comfort. In this time at home, we have also increasingly acquainted ourselves with the objects and people that surround us. The parts of our daily lives that we might ignore or quickly gloss over emerged as everyday reminders of our space. Amongst the chaos of the world, we have embraced our homes as a place to be Still.
Throughout art history, still life paintings have served as a way to emphasize common objects and seemingly mundane moments. The artists in this exhibition combine this embracing of the everyday with instances of portraiture in order to share their spaces of refuge. Featuring the paintings of Scott Csoke, Jonathan Evans, Lori Larusso, & Lina Tharsing, Still showcases the artists’ experiences of home through the last three years. The works in this show explore the instances of the calm and serene stillness that exist amidst the chaos of life. These paintings serve as different iterations of the calm before, during, and after the storm. Here, there is stillness in preparation of what might be yet to come. Whether alone, with friends and family, or amongst nature, these times of stillness come to look very differently from one another. Regardless, these paintings, in distinct ways, illustrate aspects of the mundane in order to investigate the artist’s deeply intertwined relationship to their surroundings.
In this exhibition, the word Still also acts as a declaration of persistence. Despite the calmness in these images, they do not inherently evoke feelings of serenity. Exhaustion, sickness, and frustration continue to encroach on these paintings as well as on our lives at home. Rather than dwell in these feelings of discontent, however, the artists in this show remind us of the joyfully mundane parts of our lives that keep us moving forward. They emphasize the perseverance that still exists despite any fallbacks or shortcomings. This exhibition serves as a space of contemplation. Through their paintings, Csoke, Evans, Larusso, & Tharsing provide us with intimate moments of their lives in order to emphasize the importance of being still, and still being.
This exhibition will be on display at Bolivar Art Gallery in Lexington, KY from September 29 - October 28, 2023.
OPENING RECEPTION - Friday, Sept. 29, 5-7PM
ARTIST PANEL W/ LARUSSO AND THARSING - Friday, Oct. 13, 12-1PM
The Artists
Scott Csoke
Brooklyn, NY
Scott Csoke (b. 1993 Rockville, MD) received their BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. They have worked with Anthropologie, Christian Cowan, LAZOSCHMIDL, The Greenbrier, and more. Antiques, dogs, and pink gingham are their constant source of inspiration. Painting is their way of teaching the viewer about the ever-changing mystery of queerness.
Jonathan Evans
Philadelphia, PA
Jonathan Evans' figurative paintings are autobiographical by nature, in that they depict his life as it goes on. He is a terrible writer, abysmal actually. His way of communicating to his future self is through oil painting. His practice is daily, so he will always be able to refer back to a piece and be transported back to that time in his life. The work is familiar, emotional, simple and intimate. The subjects are himself, along with his family, friends, and pets. The paintings are meant to keep you, slow you down and share an exchange of emotion.
Lori LaRusso
Louisville, KY
Lori Larusso is an American visual artist working primarily with themes of domesticity and foodways. Her body of work encompasses paintings and installations that explore issues of class, gender, and anthropocentrism, and how these practices both reflect and shape culture. She embraces color as a carrier of spatial properties, and image as conduit for complex narratives. Visually rich elaborations of life-affirming subjects serve as purposeful symbols of specific time and place.
Larusso’s work is exhibited widely in the US and is included in various public and private collections. She has been awarded numerous residency fellowships including Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Sam & Adele Golden Foundation, and MacDowell where she received a Milton and Sally Avery Fellowship. She is a recipient of the Kentucky Arts Council’s Al Smith Fellowship, multiple grants from the Great Meadows Foundation and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Larusso is the 2019 Kentucky South Arts Fellow and is the recipient of the 2020 Fischer Prize for Visual Art.
Lori Larusso earned an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and a BFA from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP). She currently lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky and is represented by Rubine Red Gallery in Palm Springs and Galleri Urbane in Dallas, TX. Visit www.lorilarusso.com for more information.
Lina Tharsing
Lexington, KY
Lina Tharsing is a Kentucky-based artist whose work has been shown across the Southeastern United States. She was named a superstar of Southern art by Oxford American. Her most recent solo show, Chez Elle, was an online exhibition with MARCH. She was recently featured in BRINK, a literary magazine. The most recent exhibitions she has been included in are Chew at Scroll NYC, Small Paintings at Venus Over Manhattan, and Pre-Renovation Potluck at MARCH. She has been featured in Garden and Gun Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, Burnaway, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Journal, RadioLab's blog, SFMOMA's blog, Hyperallergic, and Booooooom.