For Immediate Release For Further Information, please contact
Pamela Siemon 203.263.3449

ARTIST EMBRACES PAINTING, COLLAGE, SCULPTURE
AND ARCHITECTURE SIMULTANEOUSLY
THROUGH THE ART OF ASSEMBLAGE

Woodbury, CT - Fenn Gallery announces Pentimento, a solo exhibition featuring assemblage art by Hudson Valley artist Leah Rhodes. The show runs from Wed., May 17th - Sunday, June 25, 2006. The public is invited to the Artist Reception on Saturday, May 20th from 4-6 pm.

Heralded by then Museum of Modern Art curator William Seitz as one of the two most important innovations in modern art, “assemblage” encompasses all work that is composed from found objects or material from everyday life. Pentimento is a painter’s term for an earlier version of a painting that shows through when the top layer of paint has peeled away. It also refers to walls that peel to reveal their history. Rhode’s assemblages are wall structures that reveal history, and express her passion for archeology, mythology and ruins.

Through the integration of materials like bark, twigs, seed pods, plaster casts, gauze and wood, often embellished with metallic or iridescent paints, Rhodes transforms recognizable objects into something much more fantastic and mysterious. Her work metaphorically speaks about how the art object is many different things at the same time. Included in the show are Baby Carrier Assemblages influenced by American Indian imagery, and shaped canvas constructions which are reminiscent of arched altar pieces, with “milagros”, miracle charms found in Greek churches.

There are antique places she has in her memory, that inspire her collage and assemblage work. In her collages, Rhodes releases magnificent and perplexing gilded and dark images that draw you in again and again. “Ride the Dark Horse” is a surreal study of horses galloping through galactic darkness. “You Long to See The Great Pyramids” is a ruby toned collage which incorporates plaster cast hieroglyphics, gauze, black & white illustrations of egyptian artifacts, and a fortune cookie insert which reiterates the collage title. The closer one looks, the more one sees all kinds of secret goings on beneath her paintbrush. She is making art which is at once passionately expressive and formally rigorous.

Rhodes trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with a specialization in architecture under the study of Louis Kahn. She served as an adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design, NY. She has exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe and Saudi Arabia.
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