LOST HORIZON at HERTER GALLERY, UMASS AMHERST
(Dean Monogenis) Courtesy of Stux Gallery FEBRUARY 4-MARCH 4, 2008 Erik Benson, John Berens, Romain Erkiletlian, Michelle Hailey Laura Harrison, Elizabeth Huey, Rebecca Kolsrud, Jeff Konigsberg Michelle Mackey, Dana Melamed, Dean Monogenis , Asya Reznikov Kristen Schiele, Kimberly Sexton, Mary Ann Strandell “Lost Horizon” represents a critique of themes related to the professional practice and socialized ideal of architecture, its enveloping culture of construction, and the ironic ideals that emerge from assumptions of progress. I perceive these concepts through various artworks, mostly two dimensional and related to the practice of painting, which is mainly illusory in nature, and achieves a visual mythology of the constructed landscape in which the organizing principle of the natural world, its separation of time and place, is denied the chance to manifest in a proper manner. The discursive levels of such imagery aid us in approaching the larger themes at hand. All of the artis...