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** This exhibition is temporarily suspended.
Here Is Where We Meet features large-scale paintings and works on paper by Dennis Congdon and Susan Lichtman.
The artists’ styles are decidedly distinct and yet united by the deliberate attention given to the way in which a painting is constructed. Congdon makes playfully saturated works with the use of a stencil template. Lichtman is a figurative painter of domestic spaces who understands the practice of painting to be a “life of the mind.” Here is Where We Meet looks at how each artist riffs on the language of painting as well as the written word.
Throughout the exhibition, writers and poets will be invited to respond to the visual works. Curator Laurel Sucsy states, “I am inspired by the relationship between painters and poets and how artists working in each discipline use the other for inspiration and structure.”
In the month of April, the gallery will host a poetry night during which a collection of responses will be presented to the public.
Curated by Laurel Sucsy
This LifeWorks exhibition was made possible by the generous support of the Don Pelts Memorial Foundation.
Dennis Congdon:
Dennis Congdon holds a BFA in Painting from RISD and an MFA from Yale. In 1983, he won the Prix de Rome and became a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. He has taught painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Tyler School of Art and has been on the faculty at RISD since 1984. In 2003, he received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and in 2010, he received RISD’s John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Congdon’s work has been exhibited widely. Since 2013, he has had three solo shows in New York City: CUE Foundation in 2013 (curated by Stanley Whitney,); Horton Gallery in 2014 ; and “Congeries” at Zieher Smith and Horton Gallery in 2015. In 2015, his large work “Hummocks” was included in the James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition at the ICA Boston (curated by kijidome).
About Susan Lichtman:
Susan Lichtman is a figurative painter of domestic spaces, working out of her home studio in southeastern Massachusetts. She is the Charles Bloom Professor of the Arts of Design at Brandeis University, where she has taught painting and drawing since 1980.
Lichtman received her undergraduate degree from Brown University and an MFA in Painting from Yale University School of Art. A recipient of a 2018 fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, she also has awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. She was the Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence at Hollins University in 2017 and has been a visiting critic and lecturer at studio art programs throughout the U.S. and Europe. Lichtman has recently exhibited paintings at Steven Harvey Fine Arts Projects in New York, at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia, and the Wilson Museum of Hollins University in Roanoke, VA.
About the Curator (Laurel Sucsy):
Laurel Sucsy is a painter and writer living in Memphis, TN. She received a BA from Bowdoin College and an MFA from Tyler School of Art. She has taught at Rhodes College and Memphis College of Art. Recent curatorial projects include Between the Eyes, an exploration into abstract painting and how we see it. Recent exhibitions include Finding the Edge, at The Dixon Gallery and Gardens (TN) and Paintings at John Davis Gallery (NY). She is the director of LifeWorks, which aims to activate a sense of community through exposure to the arts.
