The Thousandfold Principle/Jeremy Szopinski

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:09:52 GMT

[b]TuckUnder Projects is very pleased to announce the solo exhibition [i]The Thousandfold Principle[/i], featuring the oil paintings of Minneapolis painter/printmaker Jeremy Szopinski.[/b] [i]The Thousandfold Principle/Jeremy Szopinski[/i] opens at TuckUnder Projects, Thursday, May 23, 6-9 pm. The exhibition runs May 23-June 23, 2013, with unstructured hours Wednesday through Sunday, and by appointment. Please email [url=mailto:info@tuckunder.org]info@tuckunder.org[/url] to confirm open hours. TuckUnder Projects is located at 5120 York Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN, USA 55410. For further information visit [url=http://www.TuckUnder.org/]www.TuckUnder.org[/url]. American artist Jeremy Szopinski (Born Ironwood, MI, 1975) is a Minneapolis-based painter, printmaker and visual artist whose artwork navigates the space, structure and materiality of abstraction. Szopinski has exhibited at numerous venues both regionally and nationally including Woodward Gallery (NY), Soo Visual Arts Center, Phipps Center for the Arts, Speedboat Gallery, and the Duluth Art Institute. He has worked as an Adjunct Faculty member at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, MN, as a Senior Letterpress Printer at Studio On Fire in Minneapolis, and has painted murals. He received his BFA in 1998 from the College of Visual Arts, St. Paul, and completed his MFA in Painting at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, in 2010. Further works can be found on his website at [url=http://www.jeremyszopinski.com]www.jeremyszopinski.com[/url]. For the works in[b] [/b][i]The Thousandfold Principle[/i], Szopinski reflects upon a quote by televangelist Benny Hinn as an underlying thematic narrative:[i] [/i][b] [/b]“When I saw the amazing harvest, I confess I still wondered if the results I was experiencing might just be a coincidence; maybe this was happening by chance, I thought.” The abstract works subtly hide a human form and character that occupies a liminal space between the surface of the paper, canvas, or board and the top transparent layers of abstract marks. Szopinski explains that the abstract paintings in his exhibit constantly move toward building unresolved tensions between opposing forces both formally and thematically. The underlying figures, some of which are discernable, suggest violence and religious ecstasy, belief and doubt. Abstraction, in the form of large swoops and geometric shapes, frequently overtake the figures. Conversely, through high key color and overlapped composition, the work maintains a connection to old master religious painting. Szopinski often visually references the pictorial imagery of El Greco’s mystical space and Caravaggio’s violent dramas. Szopinski’s printmaking employment plays a visible role in his current paintings. The act of mixing CMYK inks is often mimicked on the surface of the works. Created on Terraskin paper mounted on board and found/recycled wood materials, utilizing both traditional oil paints and conventional printmaking inks, and applied with squeegees, knives and rollers, the abstractions vary in scale from tiny wooden blocks to larger paper works. The changes in scale and material often evoke a mood shift that alters the dialectic.

Also on view will be the start of a five month exterior project [i]Look (again) Residency: Sunflower Revolution[/i] by low tech/high joy artists Marlaine Cox and Karen Kasel. For the start of their residency, low tech/high joy will present a singular metal lens scoping/viewing device that peers onto a particular spot within the TuckUnder yard. Included will be the presenting of hand packaged sunflower seeds to viewers to “spread the revolution.” Further fabricated metal lens scoping devices and participatory activity will be added as the residency proceeds. Collaborating for over six years, low tech/high joy has created simple placemaking activity and organic participatory project work, which includes the [i]Shanty of Misfit Toys[/i] at the Art Shanties on Medicine Lake. TuckUnder Projects is a temporary, independent artist exhibition space and sculpture site located within the Fulton neighborhood of Southwest Minneapolis. As an alternative, hybridic home-based contemporary gallery, TuckUnder Projects specializes in unrecognized emerging artists and curatorial collaborators, tactical institutional critique, participatory initiatives and conceptual curatorial projects. Artistic quality at TuckUnder is based upon artist’s tactical aesthetics, participatory exchange, home economics, and conceptual fortitude rather than traditionally conservative art fair and gallery criteria.

For its second season of interior and exterior art exhibit programming, TuckUnder plans six platform exhibits that engage the local community with under recognized local and regional emerging artists and curators working in visual arts, video, site-specific sculpture and installation from May thru November 2013. Artists will collaborate with the unique 1950’s architectural environs, TuckUnder garage, fake butterflies and woodpecker, raspberry patch, and scenic overlook. Forthcoming exhibition and curatorial projects include the artists Jeremy Szopinski, Holly Streekstra, Mary Bergs, Christina Chang, Nathaniel Smith, and exterior resident collaborators low tech/high joy (Marlaine Cox & Karen Kasel). Currently on view at TuckUnder is [i]Vague[/i], a solo installation by visual artist Pete Driessen, now thru May 19, 2013.

TuckUnder Projects was created with the generous help of MRAC, Springboard for the Arts Incubator program, Arvesen Co., Driessen Water, Northern Sun, Printz, and many individuals. TuckUnder Projects activity was funded, in part, by a 2012 Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Community Arts Grant, and by appropriations from the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the State's general fund, and its arts and cultural heritage fund that was created by a vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.

Image: [i]Triple Fire-Detail[/i]/ Jeremy Szopinski © 2013/Oil on board/43x44 Inches. For further information please contact Pete Driessen at [url=mailto:info@tuckunder.org]info@tuckunder.org[/url], or visit Jeremy Szopinski’s website: [url=Karen_Kasel]www.jeremyszopinski.com[/url].

mnartists.org: pete driessen

The Thousandfold Principle/Jeremy Szopinski