The Momentary: Clare Asch, John Daly, Jeffrey Heyne
THE MOMENTARY
Associate Member Exhibition
curated by Georgina Lewis + Lior Neiger
August 4–29, 2021
"The Momentary" is a show that illuminates time as a marker, both absolute and arbitrary. Things can change in a minute. An instant can seem staggering. The momentary is consequential. The exhibiting artists consider how time functions in their respective mediums and art practices, and how their various approaches changed as a result of the pandemic.
Below artists Clare Asch, John Daly, and Jeffrey Heyne share their process, practice and approach in creating their work.
Clare Asch
In my paintings I start out with a geometric structure that is altered and expanded on through the use of painterly gesture and the natural flow of the materials. Once the geometric structure is established, I work on each painting in layers. The spontaneous layers correspond to moments in time. Each painting can be seen as a journal made up of momentary experiences that upon completion chronicle a story.
John Daly
As a landscape painter whose approach is rooted in abstract expressionism, time is an essential component of my subject matter and process. Just as the landscape is reworked by its human occupants, I investigate the aesthetic possibilities of resulting cultural landscapes via an iterative strategy—making multiple acrylic paintings of a specific locale and landscape type (mine, cranberry bog, airfield, etc.) in a search for an archetypal expression that unifies the place and type. Early paintings in a series are laborious; later works happen in a relative instant because they are a distillation of what has come before. The pieces in this show are those that represent the joyful and rapid culmination of this investigatory process.
Jeffrey Heyne
For five years now, I lie in wait for those occasional days when fog rolls in from Boston Harbor and enshrouds the Old Northern Avenue Bridge–all in the effort to capture a new photographic portrait of this rusting iron structure.
With recall to the strange and accidental colors resulting from my failed attempts of developing color slide film 45 years ago, I employ these same colors on these bridge photos. I hope to elicit a mood, but also raise an awareness over the chemical nature that can make colors seem aesthetically pleasing, but also potentially toxic.