Matt Browning
Eric Elliott
Jonathan Hudak
Whiting Tennis

Deep Space Punctuated by Planets

June 5 – 29, 2008

Deep Space Punctuated by Planets is an exhibition that brings together a group of artists who address personal perceptions of environment as a central fixation and source of creative inquiry in their practices. Jonathan Hudak, Eric Elliot, Whiting Tennis and Matt Browning share a common commitment to the ways in which space can be activated and can elicit visceral disturbance in observers. 

The primary objective of this show is to explore how each individual artist's output can be pushed in new directions within the context and proximity of each others' work. Deep Space Punctuated by Planets will deliver an exciting, emotionally charged experience that ricochets between four different perceptions of the roles space, time, and object play in building unique and effective environments.

Jonathan Hudak creates penetrable mixed-media spaces that are stimulated by a concentrated focus on the depth of his picture plane. The loose marks in his paintings and installations function as physical record of the experiential mapping of a given area. The resulting imagery produces tangible, yet frenetic atmospheres that focus on space itself rather than the objects that might contextualize it.

Eric Elliott’s still lifes exist somewhere between the abstract and representational as his meaty application of paint probes the boundary between image and object. His literal and figurative graying of his pictures creates an overarching realm of interconnectedness in his work, where objects fade in and out of the space they occupy. 

Whiting Tennis has a fascinating reverence for utilitarian objects, rural craft, and historical American architecture. His paintings, sculptures, and structures not only revitalize bygone eras, they so strongly illustrate our innate desire to build and create that they physically energize their viewers. The rural, utopian scenes established by the installation of his work direct attention to the human body's boundless territories of perception, eliciting feelings of hope, idealism, and wonder. 

Matt Browning combines found objects with a personal language of signs and symbols to create ambiguous, site-specific, mixed-media drawings. Simultaneously engaged with the painterly concerns of color relationships and the depiction of space, Browning is also interested in constructing environments that resonate with the viewer on a youthfully experiential level.