PET PEEVES

Peter Drake, Kevin Ford, Margot Bird, Sarah Coote, Matthew Uebbing, Tatiana Istomina, Michael Polakowski, and Sarah Grass
On view: March 20th – April 17th, 2022
Opening reception: April 2nd, 4–7pm

5-50 Gallery is proud to present PET PEEVES, a group show featuring the works of eight artists: Peter Drake, Kevin Ford, Margot Bird, Sarah Coote, Matthew Uebbing, Tatiana Istomina, Michael Polakowski and Sarah Grass. The show will be on view from the 20th of March through the 17th of April, with a reception on the 2nd of April from 4 – 7pm

PET PEEVES focuses on work that feature domestic animals, pets, in a humoristic manner (plus two pesky flies). By displaying the works of eight artists that depict the same subject matter, this group show demonstrates how animals can be interpreted in many different ways. Be it through the investigation of scientific studies of animals, the substitution of an animal for a different object, or the representation of an animal’s personality. This exhibition prompts viewers to reconsider human/animal interaction and how animals affect our perceptions of the world around us.

Peter Drake’s work collages bits and pieces of cultural detritus into new narratives. Magazines, movies, toys and art history are all just the raw elements of my paintings. By cropping, omitting and adding to found imagery I shed light on small strange moments. There is the point and counterpoint of unexpected combinations, the uncanny internal logic when one image seems to require another. Consequently there is always more than one story being told. Drake believes that all pictures have various levels of meaning; there is the original intention and then everything beyond that intention. The most magical aspect of pictures is the degree to which they exceed their original intentions.

Kevin Ford draws on a wide range of visual traditions and histories as he explores the very immediate act of looking. His objects are rendered as barely there - inhabiting a space between a glance, observation, and memory, mimicking the visual slippage of internal images. His paintings are made with an economical combination of delicate brushwork and loose airbrushing. They simultaneously allude to the atmospheric sfumato of Renaissance pictorial space, the narrow depth of field of photographic images, and the pixelization that occurs as one zooms in on a digital image. The images hover in and out of focus, capturing how our eyes hold onto things, release them, and then return to them once again: the internal projection of the thing and the thing itself.

Margot Bird’s current series of paintings is primarily driven by her desire to elicit subtle humor at a glance. It is secondarily inspired by her interest in confusing environments. There is a perplexity that arises when something appears where it doesn’t belong, and this is specifically where she likes to insert the friendly, adorable faces of kittens. This motif achieves both those goals using all manner of methods. The kittens are put in menacing locations, in functional positions, or can be found as bizarre replacements in bombastic shows. However, it is when these kittens are inserted into naturally disorienting environments that she finds them most agreeably embraced.

Sarah Coote makes paintings using elements of collage and representation with photographs, sponges, and acrylic paint. Internet porn culture of repetitious fantasy scenarios overlaps with domesticated nature. Coote’s paintings send up mythologies of the feminine from the innocent to the witch, L’Inconnue de la Seine to Medusa. Together they map an artificial space of overdetermined play that turns out to be another Edenic garden of temptation and blame. Occasionally it is interrupted by pets gone wild. This reckoning is still in process.

The paintings Matthew Uebbing made in the past year are a reflection on this tense period in time. Between the studio, the apartment, and the remnants of a social life, the coronavirus pandemic has transformed everyday existence into an anxious blur that slips in and out of focus. Any sense of feeling at ease is fleeting. In his practice, Uebbing combines techniques and materials that are visually at odds with each other to create environments that seem confused or polarizing, both to the viewing audience and the beings that inhabit each work. Hoping that, by solidifying these stratified elements through representation, we will be able to use them as touchstones, and maybe find our way back home.

Tatiana Istomina’s featured works are from her “Flight Mechanics” series, an ongoing project that brings together images from history and history of science, untangling the ambivalent relationships between the notions of a mechanism and a living organism. Combined into 2D and 3D structures made of wood, string, and printed or embroidered fabric, these images map out the gray zone between the mechanical and the organic, in which the congregations of human bodies may act as impersonal social machines, and the complex mechanical systems approach the individuality and fragility of living things.

Michael Polakowski’s practice rests on the intersection between gallery painting and large-scale murals. He draws heavily on his upbringing in the Midwest to create works that reflect the social climate of his home. To date, his body of work juxtaposes the real and unreal to tell stories that are as absurd as they are familiar. Often, his work draws upon his sketchbook practice – diligently observing and documenting his environment with surreal juxtapositions which insinuate that “not everything is quite right here.”

Sarah Grass is a Chilean-American visual artist living and working in Queens, NY. Her practice uses visual language to explore the psychological effects of global social conflict. Through disarming symbolism and metaphor, such as her phallic female dachshund avatar, Grass expresses social anxieties, the displaced identity of diaspora cultures, and the weakened female voice under patriarchal rule.