DEPTH PERCEPTION
MEL REESE
TRACI JOHNSON
MORGAN EVERHART
ANDREW KEIPER
ANDREA CALDARISE
RACHAEL WREN
Curated by Morgan Everhart and Mel Reese
The Yard City Hall Park 116 Nassau Street , Floors 5 & 6 New York, NY 10038
November 15th, 2021 - February 11, 2022
Reception - Thursday, February 10th 6-8pm - RSVP HERE
For artwork inquiries and appointments, contact morgan@morganeverhart.com
“Not all modernist painting was abstract, not by a long shot––but the entire field of painting was reconfigured by the arrival of abstraction. The old genres never went away, but their significance changed––they became, in fact, more abstract, more generalized. I like to put it this way: still life became object, figure became presence, and landscape became space”. –Barry Schwabsky, “Landscape Painting Now”.
What makes an artwork a landscape? There is a general understanding that a landscape is a depiction of natural scenery, but the way we define and orient ourselves with the outdoors has developed drastically since modernism and the digital age. Landscapes, being primarily non-human, have now become a stage for an artist to describe what they don't understand and cannot control. In essence, landscapes explore the perplexities and paradoxes of the human perspective.
Landscapes often aim to represent the physical beauty of the outdoors. There’s also an inherent complexity to the landscape that allows an individual to reconcile indescribable, internal dialogues. With both of these objectives in mind, landscapes are even a method for exploring the boundaries and materiality of an artistic medium itself. This exhibition considers the range in which landscape exists in contemporary art and questions the point in which an artwork is a landscape or rather, a point of departure for an emotional message.
Each artist in this show approaches the landscape from a unique perspective. Rachael Wren’s paintings coalesce geometry, brushstroke, and color to generate an environment of humming, harmony. Andrew Keiper’s sound installation provides the listener with a nostalgia for a place beyond their own current location. Andrea Caldarise’s psychological and whimsical memory-scapes are the perfect example of the fantastical romanticism thriving through en-plein air painting today. Traci Johnson’s bold, grounding installations and tapestries emit a joyous release and let us redefine our present mental space.
“Depth Perception” is a group exhibition of artists that explore their own spatial relativity through a range of visual and/or audible hierarchies. Depth Perception features Mel Reese, Traci Johnson, Morgan Everhart, Andrew Keiper, Andrea Caldarise, and Rachael Wren. This exhibition is co-curated by two participating artists, Morgan Everhart and Mel Reese, who see this show as an opportunity for viewers to consider what mental, physical, and illusory elements influence their own vista.
Traci Johnson
Traci Johnson, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Johnson specializes in textile design, installation and sculpture. Johnson has shown at numerous galleries including Art Port Kingston , Sweet Lorraine Gallery, Micheal David & Co, Museum at FIT and F.I.T. Art & Design Gallery. Johnson is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology majoring in Fine Arts with a minor in Art History.
Johnson’s work is fundamentally driven by creating a healing place that escapes judgement. Through creating their own world, Johnson wonders what reality would look like without worry and trauma from race, class, social, and status. As Johnson explores these concepts, they work towards personal and shared resolutions.
@kailuaa @rugsbykailuaa
Traci Johnson, “Fuzzed”, Faux Fur, Mirror, 2020, 17 x 16 inches
SOLD
Traci Johnson, “Mystery Machine” Yarn, Mirror, Rubber Pad, 2021, 26 x 17 inches
SOLD
Traci Johnson, “Fleshed Light”, Yarn, Rubber Pad, 2021, 13 x 11 inches
$310.00
Traci Johnson, “Evil Eye”, Yarn, Rubber Pad, 2020, 5 inches
SOLD
Andrew Paul Keiper
Andrew Paul Keiper is an artist and educator based in Baltimore, Maryland where he teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Working in sound, image and installation, Andrew's work dances across the boundaries of sound art, experimental music and sound design. Much of Andrew's work contemplates the legacy of his grandfather's role in the creation of the atomic bomb. Andrew has shown regionally and nationally, including a large scale exhibition at the South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Sound can be a terrain where desire manifests – a whisper, the call of a bird or a snippet of song can all evoke a longing for distant people, times and places. In Peripheries 1, Keiper blends field-recordings made in forests important to him with other elements to create an imaginary grove where strange and enchanted things flit and echo at the periphery of our hearing, deep in the woods. Keiper is interested in providing a source of comfort and whimsy for the folks who will spend their days working in offices near this piece – a bit of reprieve and mystery as the city settles into the cold of winter.
andrewpaulkeiper.com @shudderingnoisemachine 
Andrew Keiper, “Peripheries”, 12-Channel Sound Work, Yamaha HS5 Near-Field Monitors, Poplar Shelf, 2021, 58 Minute Loop; Shelf 32 inches
$1,500.00
Andrea Bartine Caldarise
Andrea Bartine Caldarise is a painter and collaborator inspired by happenstance conversations and memories. Caldarise's art explores the psychological connection between places and people. Caldarise studied painting and art history at Tyler School of Art, Temple University where she received a BFA and she holds an MA from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been awarded residencies at Post Contemporary, Troy, NY and Yale School of Art's Norfolk summer residency. She was a 2017-2018 artist resident with Trestle Gallery in Brooklyn. Andrea Bartine Caldarise has exhibited her artwork in Philadelphia, New York, and Rome, Italy. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
andreacaldarise.com @caldarise
Andrea Caldarise, “They wanted a clean break”, Oil on Wood Panel, 2017, 30 x 24 inches
$1,250.00
Andrea Caldarise, “From the Rose Garden into the Vale of Cashmere”, Oil on Wood Panel, 2021, 30 x 24 inches
$2,000.00
Andrea Caldarise, “Crabs like frozen chicken: Acts of Remembrance”, Oil on Wood Panel, 2020, 18 x 18 inches
$650.00
Rachael Wren
Rachael Wren received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from the University of Washington. She has had solo shows at Wave Hill, The String Room Gallery at Wells College, The Painting Center, Schema Projects, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Providence College. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the National Academy Museum, Garis & Hahn, Jeff Bailey Gallery, Rooster Gallery, Geoffrey Young Gallery, and Trestle Gallery, among many others. Rachael is the recipient of the Julius Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy Museum and an Aljira Fellowship. She has been awarded residencies at Emerson Landing, Chashama North, the Saltonstall Foundation, the Byrdcliffe Art Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, the Anderson Center, and the Artist House at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Wren’s paintings bring together elements of both landscape and geometric abstraction. Wren creates an evocative experience of landscape space, light, and atmosphere within a grid-like structure. Wren is drawn to moments in nature when form and space seem to mingle, when edges disappear and atmosphere becomes all-encompassing — fog playing between tree branches, light shining through clouds, the veil of a snowstorm, or the fading colors at dusk. In Wren’s work, hints of landscape emerge and then dissolve into layers of subtly shifting color and mark. The small, discrete brushstrokes accumulate into dense, shimmering spaces, echoing the fundamental particles that compose all matter. They hover and vibrate between the crisp lines of an anchoring grid, an interplay that suggests the universal duality between structure and randomness, order and chaos, the known and the unknown.
rachaelwren.com @rachaelwren
Rachael Wren, “Nevertheless”, Oil on Linen, 2017, 24 x 24 inches
Rachael Wren, ”Elegy”, Oil on Linen, 2017, 24 x 24 inches
Morgan Everhart
Exhibiting Artist & Curator
Morgan Everhart works in painting, curation, and writing. Everhart’s practice challenges naturalism and ontology through reflection on personal experiences, identity, and art history. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Texas in 2013, and her Master of Fine Arts from the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016. Recent exhibitions include: Flesh and Bloom at The David Owsley Museum of Art, Indiana (2021), Flowers for my Failures at the Longwood Museum, Virginia (2019); BLOOM at Millersville University, Pennsylvania (2019); and, Four Degrees of Abstraction at Markel Fine Arts, New York (2018). The artist has multiple murals in New York City, one of which is featured in Neumeraki’s International exhibition Art Off-Screen. Everhart currently lives and works in New York, where she is also a contributing writer to A Women’s Thing publication and a curator-in-residence at The Yard City Hall Park.
morganeverhart.com @morgan_everhart
Morgan Everhart, “Over Night : Caught in the mist”, Acrylic on Plastex, 2019, 96 x 48 inches
$18,000.00
Morgan Everhart, “Over Night: I'm not a hunter”, Acrylic on Plastex, 2019, 96 x 48 inches
$18,000.00
Morgan Everhart, “Depth Perception: Out of My Reach”, Oil on Panel, 2020, 14 x 14 inches
$2,500.00
Morgan Everhart, “Depth Perception: How I Missed the Mark”, Oil on Panel, 2020, 14 x 14 inches
$2,500.00
Morgan Everhart, “Depth Perception: Place for Me”, Oil on Panel, 2020, 14 x 14 inches
$2,500.00
Morgan Everhart, “Depth Perception: Trust from a Distance”, Oil on Panel, 2020, 14 x 14 inches
$2,500.00
Mel Reese
Exhibiting Artist & Curator
Mel Reese’s paintings are impressions of the natural world existing as symbolic formalism. Lines, shapes, colors, and textures are as central to her work as the process of creating them. A complex layering of these abstract elements allows her work to be representational.
Mel is a Brooklyn based artist who received her MFA in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in 2017. She has had solo exhibitions at MILCON Gallery, R&D Studios Bushwood, and Suzette LaValle in Brooklyn, NY and has shown in several selected group and juried exhibitions throughout the United States including Shape in All Its Forms at Site: Brooklyn, Post-Appreciation at the Diego Rivera Gallery at San Francisco Art Institute; Play Me A Game at the Skybridge Gallery at Eugene Lang College; Cognitive Dissidence at Ray Smith Studio; and Unicode at SVA Flatiron Gallery in Chelsea, NY. Melanie was on a panel for the “The Entrepreneurial Artist Workshop” at the Tang Museum and received the Award of Excellence from the 58th Long Island Artist Exhibition at the Art League of Long Island. Melanie’s work has been in a number of publications including New American Paintings Northeast Issue 134, New American Painting Featured Artists, Inside Artists, Studio Visit Magazine, Artwork Archive Blog, and Vellum Magazine.
melreese.com @melaniereese
For exhibition appointments or artwork inquiries, please contact morgan@morganeverhart.com