The Chazan Gallery @ Wheeler will be presenting an Emerging Artists exhibition featuring photography by Dorthe Alstrup, paintings by Lawrence Cromwell and Andrea Moreau and drawings by Sarah Goldstein from January 14 - February 3, 2005. There will be an opening reception for the artists on Friday, January 14, from 5 - 7 p.m. The public is invited.

The photography of Dorthe Alstrup depicts staged events of urban life. Characters within the photos are detached from their surrounding environment. Although they are often accompanied by other people they look stranded and alone. The contradiction is that while one sees intimate glimpses of private lives, they are viewed in public settings. The photos set up tension that makes one question how vulnerable one is in a public setting. Alstrup received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Kent Institute of Art and Design and a Masters of Fine Arts in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design. She has exhibited in galleries around the world including the United Kingdom, Denmark, Japan, France, and the United States.

 

Lawrence Cromwell thinks of his work as “a dark carnivalistic web in which themes of domestication, consumption, and assimilation interlace with threads of repression and obsession.” He is influenced consumerism, capitalism, science fiction, and Freudian symbolism. He uses these themes to portray “unvarnished social criticism.” He works in either oil on panel or gauche on paper. The use of bright bold colors make the work very animated. Cromwell received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Tennessee and his Masters of Fine Arts degree from Rhode Island School of Design. He has exhibited across the country.

 

Sarah Goldstein’s work is concerned with the relationship between figurative drawing and narrative. Her work resembles a quilt of pieced-together images, or a series of drawings that reads like a set of illustrations to more than one story. She uses mixed media materials including acrylic, gouache, charcoal, and matte medium on paper. Goldstein received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University in Montreal and her Masters of Fine Arts degree in Painting from Cornell University. She has exhibited in Canada and the United States.

Andrea Moreau uses the imagery from postage stamps “to create miniature worlds.” She sees stamps as cultural artifacts in which cultural understanding can be found not through the researching of icons, but through the repetition of formal qualities. Her clumsy and labor-intensive process acts as a “kind of metaphor for the individual’s reaction to his or her environment.” Moreau received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Illinois and is currently working on her Masters of Fine Arts degree from the Ohio State University.