Mountebank
November 22 - December 20, 2019
St. Louis, MO — Monaco is pleased to present Mountebank, a group exhibition featuring New York-based artists Samantha Bittman, Brett de Palma, Jessica Gaddis, Kathy Goodell, Kyle Hittmeier, Kate McQuillen, Amanda Nedham, David Temchulla, Andrew Paul Woolbright, and Los Angeles-based artist Lauren Fejarang. Mountebank will open with a reception on Friday, November 22, from 7:00 – 10:00 pm.
Dazzling is the romantic pageantry of the heist, the hustle, and the scheme. “Get your money up,” the charlatan wryly promises. The grifters started a country of their own, you see, a great pyramid of power with trick rungs and trap doors. It is a land of the quick draw. The mountebanks, they dance, and form a bright and gruesome circle around the fire.
We find ourselves inside and outside of this circle, making simulacral studies of the shadows that are cast from their dancing. We imagine schemes of our own (because artists have tricks too), to upturn the cart of the grand grifter. At times we are even the dancers around the fire.
So, easy goes it. Look cool and calm while you do it. A steady hand is needed when reaching for the cards. Look but don’t stare- it’s suspicious. Speak from the heart but don’t reveal it. Leave without saying goodbye.
Samantha Bittman (b. 1982, Chicago) is an artist and teacher based in Brooklyn, NY. She received her B.F.A. in Textiles from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2004, and her M.F.A. in Painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010. Her work exists between painting and weaving, and explores ideas around pattern, perception, and the relationship between loom technology and picture making. She has participated in residency programs at the Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation, Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and Ox-Bow School of Art. In 2012, she received the Artadia Award. Her work has been written about in The New York Times, Wall Street International, and The Washington Post, amongst others. Recent exhibitions include: Ronchini Gallery, London, UK; Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, IL; Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, IL; and Greenpoint Terminal Gallery; Brooklyn, NY.
Brett de Palma (b. 1949, Lexington) has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, including in the New York- New Wave show of 1981 along with artists Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, Documenta 7, Emilio Mazzoli in Modena, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, and Anders Tornberg. In 1989, he took a teaching job at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan where he still remains after 30 years.
Lauren Fejarang (b. 1987) is a Los Angeles-based artist working primarily in sculpture and collage. Fejarang’s sculptures utilize materials such as concrete and paper, to address questions around contradicting sensations that impinge the body. Fejarang’s work finds power in its relationship to the human form—the artist engages unlikely materials to create markers and sculptural records. Her collage work also addresses the body, but in a two-dimensional format that allows viewers to see flesh as material reconfigured. Fejarang received her MFA from Art Center College of Design in 2013.
Jessica Gaddis (b. 1987) is an artist living and working in Kingston, NY. She has worked at the Harvard Ceramics Program and has exhibited at Mother Gallery (Beacon, NY), Super Dutchess (NY, NY), and internationally in Iceland. She holds a BFA and MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz.
Kathy Goodell is a New York painter and sculptor, inventor of processes exploring extremes of methodology to achieve a metaphysical and revelatory image. Her bibliography includes, a Huffington Post Interview, “Conversations with Kathy Goodell”, 2013, reviews in Hyperallergic; Juxtapose , NYTimes, and inclusion in the documentary film, Crumb, 1995.
Most recently she was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 2013 and a Camargo/ Bau Fellowship to France, 2014. Previous awards include New York Foundation,1997,1993; Pollock-Krasner 1991;National Endowment for the Arts, 1979,1982;and a Fulbright Fellowship,in 1977.
Kyle Hittmeier (b. 1983) is an interdisciplinary artist and curator whose work explores compositions of power through the integration of CAD and rendering processes into physical media such as painting, printing, drawing and sculpture. Raised primarily in Northern California, Hittmeier received his Bachelor's of Art from the University of California, Davis, and subsequently moved to New York in the summer of 2008. In 2014, Hittmeier graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a Master's of Fine Arts in Painting. He was a resident mentor for the Salama Bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Residency in Abu Dhabi, UAE; resident artist for the Digital Painting Atelier Program at Ontario College of Art and Design; and the Wassiac Summer Residency Program.
Hittmeier has recently exhibited in Nancy Margollis Gallery, the Boston Center for the Arts. the Lamar Dodd School of Art, Ontario College of Art and Design, Project ARTSpace, Sister Gallery, SPRING/BREAK, Super Dutchess Gallery, and Transfer Gallery. Hittmeier has curated with Super Dutchess Gallery, SPRING/BREAK, Warehouse421 & 411, Sol Koffer Gallery, and 92Y Tribeca. Hittmeier has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island College, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Stevens Institute of Technology. He currenty lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Kate McQuillen is a Brooklyn-based painter. McQuillen has exhibited at Massey Klein Gallery (NY), Deanna Evans Projects (NY), the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UT), Geoffrey Young Gallery (MA), Left Field Gallery (CA), Western Exhibitions (IL), and O’Born Contemporary (Toronto). Writings about her work have been included in such news outlets as Art in Print, Hyperallergic, Printeresting, The Chicago Tribune, and The Chicago Reader, and in publications by the Poetry Foundation, Columbia College Chicago and Rutgers University. She has attended residencies in the U.S. and abroad, including Mass MoCA, Ox-Bow School of Art, and Frans Masereel Centrum. She holds degrees from Massachusetts College of Art (BFA), and York University (MFA).
Amanda Nedham completed her BFA at OCAD University in Printmaking, her MFA at RISD in Painting, and resides in Brooklyn. Her practice is interdisciplinary with an emphasis on drawing and sculpture. Nedham recently published a book of letters and drawings titled, My Boyfriend is a Peacekeeper, and is currently working on a book of poems and drawings dedicated to Dian Fossey. Recent exhibitions include I’ll draw you a fly at Field Projects (NYC), Frida Smoked at Invisible-Exports (NYC), and Extract IV Young Art Prize at GL Strand (Copenhagen). Nedham recently attended the Wassaic Artist Project residency and the ARTHA studio residency. She runs workshops on alternative love letters in New York City and regularly curates.
David Temchulla was born and raised in Denver, CO.His work combines found imagery, interactive technology, and organic materials that explores the spaces between the art object and lived experience. He holds degrees from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA) and the New York University- Tisch Interactive Telecommunications Program (MPS).
Andrew Paul Woolbright (American, b. 1986) is an MFA graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design in painting. Woolbright integrates paintings, sculpture, and video into an ongoing project about Shrinebeasts- grotesque and uncanny figurations built of tangled lovers. Using himself and his experience as subjects within his work, Woolbright has been constructing an expansive mythology that documents the tentacular ongoing transformation of Kafka figuration and moving shrines of love. Woolbright attended the School of the Art Institute Chicago where he was greatly influenced by the work of the alternative figuration of Ivan Albright and Mary Lou Zelazny before being taught by Angela Dufresne at the Rhode Island School of Design. Woolbright has exhibited with the Ada Gallery, Nancy Margolis and SRO in New York, Baby Blue in Chicago, and Dread Lounge in LA. His work has been reviewed in Two Coats of Paint, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Reader, and the Providence Journal and is currently in the collection of the RISD Museum. In 2020, he will be curating a survey show of Kathy Goodell’s work at the Dorsky Museum and an international group exhibit with Coherent gallery in Brussels. He currently teaches at SUNY New Paltz and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
