As one of the most well known art gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey has recently announced Everlast, a two person exhibition by Betsy Odom and Celeste Rapone. It is worth to note that one of the artist, Celeste Rapone is also a faculty currently teaching in the School of the Art institute of Chicago.
Completed BFA in Rhode Island School of Design, Rapone had received her MFA degree in SAIC majoring in painting. Focusing in hyper realistic and representative painting in her salty career, Rapone’s work is now focusing on figurative abstraction. In her exhibition Everlast Rapone had shown interest in approaching the everyday life in an obscuring way, in this series of narrative, situational paintings contains portraits of singular or multiple figures in thematically specific context inspired by a job or activity that is unfamiliar to Rapone. What is more striking than the interesting subject matter of the paintings is the high facility Rapone holds.
Passionate about figurative pairings, Rapone’s strength in color mixing especially when it comes to skin tone, is drastically presented in her work. Presenting most of her figures in a most uncomfortable position however using highly convincing skin tone it is enough to suggest that the figures are human.While the sensational color palette might be overwhelming, it is also interesting to see in some of Rapone’s painting she had also show off her high skill set by incorporating highly complex factors, for example black and white cubes looks printed alike.
In additional, considering the complexities Rapone had also reveled her stunning skills at compositional design, using geometric shapes has simplified the painting visually yet.
Similarly working with the everyday subject matters and simplicity, sculptor Besty Odom works in common materials particularly in leather. With ordinary objects Odom fabricators articles of clothing, gently but persuasively undoing their overdetermined cultural associations. For instance, one of Odom’s work “Gym shorts” (stands on its own, caught in motion however offers a host of beautiful mahogany bumps and curves, it’s perfectly tolled surface as sensuous as it is uncanny.) Exhibiting objects almost looks functional however dose not function as how the object would on a daily basis.
The conceptual sculpture of Betty Odom and the abstractive representational painting of Celeste Rapone had played the perfect balance for the viewer’s experience at Corbett vs. Dempsey Gallery. It is worth to mention about the overall content of the exhibition, both artist works has it’s similarities of showing extreme amount of care and control in to the work as well as presenting the quotidian objects or subject matter in a very unconventional way, It is possible for the view to not find the connection between two artists’s work and is likely to over look one or another, however it is also a pleasure to obtain more information about the exhibition and find the connection in between the paintings and the sculptures.
The exhibition Everlast will be up through October 27 in Corbett vs. Dempsey Gallery located on 1120 N Ashland Ave. It is definitely a worth visiting exhibition for those who are interested in contemporary art.