Andrew Edlin Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of the art of Jessie Dunahoo, his New York City debut.
Dunahoo is 74 years old and has lived in rural Kentucky his entire life. Deaf since birth, he had only slight vision up until his
teens, at which point he became totally blind. His art can best be described as in the tradition of quilt-making. His materials
are purposefully arranged, layered and stitched.
He collects his components by feeling their textures, primarily various types of cloth and plastic grocery bags. His stitches serve a dual function as they not only hold the quilts together but act as his mark or signature.
Dunahoo's final artworks are achieved through multi-layering. His stacked quilts are quiet yet loaded with information, unfolding like three-dimensional drawing books.
There are two installations presented in the gallery.
One is a sleeping environment. Dunahoo constructs a sleeping bag using layers of quilted fabrics and plastic bags. The top blanket is composed of stacked quilts with a seam sewn across the middle. This seam serves as a spine from which six additional perpendicular quilts stretch upwards at various angles, revealing a complex of canopies for the sleeping artist.
The second installation is made solely from local grocery store plastic bags, and is a reflection of the way the artist navigates through space, feeling with his hands his ropes made of knotted plastic bags. The knots are as uniform as his stitches. Dunahoo arranges his hanging veils of quilted plastic bags, sculpting a structure for him to move through out of thin air.
Also on view are two quilted wall-hangings. Again, choosing his fragments based only on texture, Dunahoo's color combinations are nevertheless muted and satisfying.
AE SPACE
Artists:
Mike Goodlett
Ike Moody
Dain
Albert Moser
Beverly Baker
Heady Spalding
Phillip March Jones
Jessie Dunahoo
Meg Pike
Tony Dunn
Ben Fryman
Bruce Burris
Butch Anthony
Co-founders The Jones Bros.
Andrew Edlin Gallery is pleased to welcome the Jones Shop to our project room, AE SPACE, New York.
Jones Shop is a collective of mostly self-taught artists who run a shop in Lexington, Kentucky. The shop itself is a collage of painting, sculpture, installations, t-shirts, posters, dresses, bags, antique furniture, taxidermy animals and photographs all arranged as if to tell a story. The contributing artists come from diverse backgrounds, but the unifying aesthetic is self-taught art. The space is decidedly a shop and not a gallery. The context is deliberately quirky, casual and comfortable. It has been described as a modern-day curiosity cabinet.