Artist Talk: Tuesday, February, 7 at 6pm
As children, most of us have delved with abandon into enchanting games of illusion, fortune-telling, and supernatural powers. In “Flights of Fantasy and Game Changes,” artists Nina Bentley, Kim Hanna, and Jane Lubin explore aspects of magical thinking in a cohesive exhibition.
Nina Bentley uses humor and irony to delve beneath the smooth surface of society; and yet she sees the joys and mythical elements of relationships. Her assemblage sculptures relate games to issues we face as we move from childhood to old age. Kim Hanna of Redding mines the Golden Book of Fairy Tales for its diary of symbols including black cats and white owls, crows and kings, beasts and nightmares. Card tricks, fortune telling, tribal and folk art, and the Jungian concept of synchronicity all inform her work. In Norwalk artist Jane Lubin’s collages of found images and acrylic painting, fantasy creatures inhabit the gray area between cartoons and real life. Societal concepts of beauty and gender issues underly her surrealistic and often fanciful images. As an artist, she prizes spontaneity for its psychological import. With influences such as Max Ernst and Hannah Hoch, Lubin, an M.D. as well as an artist, says “I create images that gingerly nip around the edges of the problem of how, and whether we fit as individuals into a highly organized, complex society.”
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The exhibition includes two-dimensional work as well as sculptural elements. Wall and floor space are integrated into a complex game board. Imagined creatures and game pieces cavort in their own worlds, while the works of art reveal concealed truths.
