Locks Gallery is pleased to present Odyssey, a two-person show of recent work by artists Rob Wynne and Barbara Takenaga. Both artists perform a dance between chance and precision through their chosen materials, poured glass and acrylic paint, respectively. Their works radiate a primordial energy, appearing at times illuminated and evoking galactic or aquatic phenomena such as bioluminescence, cosmic bursts and star formations.
Wynne alternates between text and abstraction in his poured and mirrored glass wall sculptures, sometimes employing poetic and idiosyncratic phrases and other times creating clustered compositions of spirals, waves, drops and splashes. His shimmering and pulsating compositions invent their own formal language of whimsy and illusion, a means to inspire, delight and surprise the senses.
Takenaga’s expansive and meditative paintings call to mind a journey through the mysteries of deep space, alternating between intensive surface detailing and vast color shifts. She embraces fluidity in her recent paintings by pouring paint to form the ground then building meticulous patterns on the surfaces, sometimes evoking motifs from Japanese printmaking, celestial shapes, or rhythmic marks that create a kind of optical illusion.
Both artists deftly explore the interplay between the minute and infinite, between materiality and illusion, utilizing repetition, accumulation and chance. Through their distinctive and laborious processes of happenstance and creative control, the works on view transfix the eye—producing an immersive beauty and spacious odyssey through their vision and craft.
Odyssey will be on view at Locks Gallery from January 13 through February 26, 2022. The gallery is open 10 am to 6 pm from Tuesday through Saturday, and by appointment. For more information, please contact info@locksgallery.com or 215-629-1000.
Rob Wynne (b.1948) lives and works in New York City and has had an extensive history of solo exhibitions in the United States and France dating back to 1981, including the Brooklyn Museum (2018-19) and Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL (2012). His work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Flag Art Foundation, New York, NY (2013); the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2010); the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX (2005). He has a forthcoming publication, Rob Wynne / OBSTACLE ILLUSION slated for Spring 2022. Wynne’s work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; the Centre Pompidou, France; the Norton Museum of Art, Florida; the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
Barbara Takenaga’s (b. 1949) work was recently the subject of a twenty-year survey exhibition at Williams College Museum of Art (2017-18; curated by Debra Bricker Balkan); a public commission for SPACE | 42 at the Neuberger Museum of Art in NY (2017); solo exhibitions at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro, VT (2019) and Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia (2018); and a large-scale installation at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA (2015-17). Takenaga was a professor of Art at Williams College from 1985 to 2018. Her work is in the collections of the Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AK; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA; Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearny, NE; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; San Jose Art Museum, CA; Smith College Museum of Art, MA; Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA, among others. Takenaga lives and works in New York City.
