Cambridge Artists Association Claudio Eshun’s photograph “Blue Magic” at the Emerging Artists exhibit at CAA@Canal.
This year’s emerging artists exhibit at the Cambridge Artists Association has a focus on everyday moments, each piece concentrating the ordinary into something remarkable.
Sabrina Gonzalez’s “La Pila de Oma” is a lovely and warm slice of life with an outdoor sink surrounded by bright green leaves, all painted with charmingly thick brushstrokes. Claudio Eshun’s photograph “Blue Magic” immerses you in the pleasures of a go-to hair product. DaNice Marshall’s “These Queens of the Projects” captures a group of women and children outside brick apartment buildings colorfully, their outfits popping with vivid patterns, the scene brimming with energy.
Melissa Krok-Horton’s print “20 Damon III” is subtle and striking, rendering an abandoned house in black and white. Boarded-up windows and “no trespassing” signs are surrounded by large swaths of negative space. The artist uses Google Maps as a reference point to conjure up details of her paternal great-grandparents’ old property, often houses demolished long ago. The results give life to what otherwise might be a sterile architectural drawing.
Cambridge Artists Association A detail from J. Adam Bee’s “Heat” from the Cambridge Artists Association exhibition.
Some works verge on the mystical. MiJung Yun’s pen and ink drawing “Volcano no. 4” depicts a tiger in a forested landscape with kaleidoscopic, intricate patterns. Chelsea Silbereis’ “zenith” conjures a cloudlike, ethereal surface out of inkjet print and cotton thread.
Cambridge Artists Association A detail from Alex Caron’s from the CAA exhibition.
But paintings such as J. Adam Bee’s “Heat” and “Dead Horse Bay” take the exhibit up a notch, giving an unexpectedly ominous tone to an otherwise innocuous series of artworks. In “Heat,” a child’s face rests in an expression of overheated malaise, their hair white and their face cherry red. The colors are hot and vivid, almost angry. Likewise, Bee depicts a dead horse’s head with studied dedication, giving a painter’s reverence to a morbid subject. These works show an astute art of noticing that’s often surprising – translating the ordinary and even the grotesque into something sublime.
Emerging Artists exhibit at CAA@Canal, 650 E. Kendall St., Kendall Square, Cambridge, up through Sept. 12. Free.
Share your own 150-word appreciation for a piece of visual art or art happening with photo to [email protected] with the subject line “Behold.”
