SOUTHFIRST 60
N6th Street Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.southfirst.org ph/fx 718 599 4884
AMANDA FRIEDMAN & ALISSA
MCKENDRICK
With a work by Duncan Grant
21 February – 23 March, 2014
SOUTHFIRST is proud to
present Devils Dust, an exhibition of new paintings by Amanda Friedman and
Alissa McKendrick, with a work by Duncan Grant. In the show, Friedman and
McKendricks paintings speak to one another through a collaborative environment
composed by the artists. The exhibition is on view from 21 February – 23 March,
2014. There will be an opening reception for the artists at the gallery on
Friday, February 21, 6-8 PM, and a spotlight poetry reading with Rachel
Glaeser, Kayla Guthrie, and Sophy Naess held on Thursday, February 27th, 7-8
PM.
Amanda Friedmans Thoughtforms, Thinking
in Pictures, Falling in Love?, and Overwhelmed, are
irregularly-shaped, patched and colorful objects often over five feet tall,
abstractions with manifest emotional states, whose titles and formal qualities
disclose personal moods and ideas. Alissa McKendricks lush flower
paintings, with titles like The Fear That Eats Me (Out) and Through
Narrow Openings, attach deadpan, often cynically sexual names to still
lifes and screen paintings that seem to have sprung from the fin-de-sicle.
The collaboration between the two artists finds resonances in the
brightly-colored blues, pinks, oranges and greens of the paintings on display,
but also in the psychologically-laden content of the disarmingly whimsical decorative
works. A single watercolor by Duncan Grant, the Bloomsbury-era decorative
painter best known for his good-looks and flamboyant love life, provides a
touchstone for the two-person show.
Amanda Friedman lives and works in Brooklyn,
NY. She graduated in 2006 with a BA in studio art from the University of
Vermont. Since 2009, she has been in numerous exhibitions including those at
Tomato House, Eli Ping, and Apartment Show. She was the co-curator of Vision
Quest, an exhibition at Nicole Klagsburn gallery in 2012, a project which
included screenings at Anthology Film Archives. In 2013 she co-founded Essex
Flowers, an artist-run space in the Lower East Side. Her most recent project, Because
Nothing Ends, an artists book, has just been published by Peradam.
Alissa McKendrick is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated with
a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2007. Her work has been
exhibited in a solo presentation at Real Fine Arts, in Brooklyn. Group
exhibitions include The Cat Show at White Columns, Sideshow at Greene
Naftali, and Happy Holidays! Drawings! at Alex Zachary Peter Currie. Her
portfolio of drawings, Alice Munro, was recently featured by Sex Magazine. Her paintings will be on
view at the Independent Art Fair, New York.
SOUTHFIRST, founded in
2000, is located at 60 N6th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn between Wythe and
Kent Avenues. Gallery hours are Saturday and Sunday from 1-6 PM and by appointment.
Subway: L train to Bedford Avenue. For more information, please contact
the gallery at 718 599 4884 or info@southfirst.org.