Deathbeds

Ann Wood
January 13-February 17, 2018
Opening reception Saturday, January 13 from 6:00-8:00 pm
Artist will be in attendance

Kirk Hopper Fine Art is pleased to present a solo exhibit featuring artist Ann Wood (Galveston). Ann Wood incorporates two- and three-dimensional pieces to create dramatic installations. With a Rococo visual appeal and hunting blinds and trophies, topiaries and bouquets, town monuments, wedding cakes, domestic objects, and historical paintings and sculptures, Wood's work has an attractive but often deceptive appearance. Initially her work seems traditionally "pretty" or look as if it could be edible, yet slowly reveals a disturbing underbelly—both hidden and obvious vignettes of danger, death, deception and decay woven throughout. Wood's new work alludes to where and how we ourselves might die. Be it in a bed, in a chair, or in front of the fireplace, death is inevitable and undignified.

In both her two-dimensional and sculptural works, themes of decadence and over-indulgence quickly become sickening, and animals freeze in a moment of ultimate humiliation, covered with what appears to be frosting, flowers and bows. Other animals are intertwined in ambiguous poses, leaving the viewer questioning whether they are fighting to their death or mating, calling attention to the thin line between love and hate and the spectacle of violence as entertainment. Violence coupled with playfulness creates a paradoxical sense of attraction, yet repulsion.

The process and materials used in this body of work also remain crucial to Wood's concepts. She relies heavily on embroidery, scrapbooking materials, thread and kitsch, and "craft store" objects such as fake flowers, sequins and puffy paint. In the spirit of dichotomies, she then contrasts this handmade "women's work" with "masculine" industrial materials such as rubber, plastic, foam, hunting decoys and taxidermy mannequins. Using embroidery as a medium, the two-dimensional works in Deathbeds reinterpret traditionally male-created historic painting in a contemporary and feminine way. The "frosting" coated, large-scale sculpture twists the idea of monument into a feminine, animal-shaped super-cake that simultaneously reminds the viewer of the discordant ideas of nurture and humiliation.

Biography

Ann Wood currently lives and works in Galveston, Texas. She received her BFA from California State University in 1996 and her MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1999. She has exhibited her works across Texas, including at the Anya Tish Gallery in Houston, the Dallas Center for Contemporary Arts, the Galveston Arts Center, the Station Museum in Houston and Women and Their Work in Austin, Texas and Art Museum of South Texas in Beaumont, Texas. She received the Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund Award to Artists from the Dallas Museum of Art in 2002.