Decadent Illusions

About

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce Decadent Illusions, an exhibition of collages and drawings from three Michigan-based artists, d’Ann de Simone, Kristen Franyutti and Elyse Gambino. The works reflect the deceptively lush and placid surface of contemporary consumer culture, while showing that just below surface lies an abyss of turmoil and decay. With all the works placed next to each other, the viewer is met with vibrant color, sumptuous beauty, and a hint of chaos. The tightly packed compositions quickly engender a sense of unease and confusion on the surface that hopes to reflect the corruption and degradation of humankind that too often seems overlooked. By invoking this experience of anxiety and uncertainty, the works invite the viewer to appraise the morality their personal experience of the art which confronts them, and of the wider world itself. On what basis do we judge that something is fundamentally “amiss?” How can the resulting anxiety be properly addressed, and in doing so, what choices are to be made? The exhibition creates an illusion of hectic beauty as it deals with the underbelly of contemporary experience. Ms. Franyutti microcosmic drawings invoke a sense of science fiction as they are concerned with genetic mutations, an illusory world of biomorphic forms inspired by the human body and its surroundings and by recent innovations in applied science. Ms. de Simone seeks to refer the inherent failings and perils of industrial civilization. Pervading her frenetic compositions is a persistent anxiety over the state of the environment, global consumption and world politics in which there is constant tension and uncertainty. Artificially colored natural elements depict nature itself as something available for technological domination and degradation. Ms. Gambino portrays uncanny urban environments, devoid of humans, but packed with remnants of their existence, to suggest the aftermath or foreshadowing of an unknowable catastrophe. A fixed and singular perspective is abandoned in favor of a collage aesthetic that eloquently expresses our predicament. D’Ann de Simone is a Professor in the studio art program at Michigan State University and a native of Westerly, Rhode Island. She received her M.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design and has exhibited widely in the U.S. and also in the UK, Europe, Middle East and North Africa. Kristen Franyutti was born in Oklahoma and currently lives and works in Southeastern Michigan. She has exhibited widely in both the U.S. and Canada. Franyutti has worked as a college art instructor and a designer for a New York fashion house. She obtained an M.F. A. from Michigan State University. Elyse Gambino is a native of Portland, Oregon, and frequently exhibits work in both the Northwest and Midwestern United States. She has taught studio art and design at Michigan State University and Delta College (Michigan). Gambino received an M.F.A from Michigan State University