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BIOPHILIA: Rebecca Allan / Amanda Besl
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Exhibit A with Anna Kaplan Contemporary presents BIOPHILIA, featuring Rebecca Allan and Amanda Besl in a two-person exhibition on view November 23 through January 10, 2020. An opening reception takes place Saturday, November 23, 6:00 - 8:00 PM and is free and open to the public.
Curated by Anna Kaplan of Anna Kaplan Contemporary based in Buffalo, NY, BIOPHILIA pairs two artists using imagery and inspiration from the garden. “BIOPHILIA brings a new curatorial voice to Corning—It is an opportunity to experience a fresh perspective and to expand the dialog available to all parties involved. It is good for everyone, perhaps audiences most of all." says Ann Welles, Director of Exhibit A.
Rebecca Allan's recent work emerges from her observations as the plant records manager at a private garden north of New York City. She witnessed the labor and artistry of gardeners who cultivate and prune rare collections of Japanese maples, conifers, vegetable, and perennial gardens. Piles of cut branches, pruning tools, and debris became a visual leitmotif for the seasons of the year. Soil is also a unifying, metaphorical material that she regards as a life-sustaining substance. These works complement Allan's ongoing involvement as an advocate for land conservation through her role as an advisor to the Kentucky Natural Land Trust and the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies.
Amanda Besl equates gardening with curating, and with 'warfare.' The imagery in her meticulous realist paintings, also stems from her experiences in the garden. Her paintings depict rose petals that have been attacked by pests and 'ethereal bobbing corpses of Japanese beetles' that have succumbed to her counter-attacks. Besl's work poetically explores cultivation and destruction, ultimately developing fable-like commentary on very real human foibles. Paired with Allan’s gestural, saturated canvases, Besl’s work adds another lens with which to consider the relationship we have with our natural environment.
Rebecca Allan (b. 1962) is a New York-based painter, writer, and horticulturist known for her gestural and chromatically nuanced abstract paintings. Her inspirations include botany, geology, and landscape conservation. Allan has exhibited in the United States and abroad in over 40 solo and 23 group exhibitions. Recently her work was acquired for the permanent collection at the United States Embassy in Olso, Norway. She is also a contributing writer for publications including Fine Art Connoisseur, and artcritical.com. In 2012, Allan became a principal collaborator of The Crossroads Project: Rising Tide, a trans-disciplinary performance piece hat addresses climate change through the perspectives of environmental science, chamber music, and visual art.
Amand Besl (b. 1976) has shown widely in both Western New York, New York City, and Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Russia. Besl holds an MFA in Painting from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI, and a BFA from SUNY Oswego. Her paintings are part of several notable private and public collections, including the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo NY; Nichido Contemporary, Tokyo, Japan; the Burger Collection, Hong Kong; and the Tullman Collection, Chicago, IL. Besl works in the Arts Department at Nichols School in Buffalo as an Upper School Visual Arts teacher. Besl lives and paints in Buffalo, NY.
Curated by Anna Kaplan of Anna Kaplan Contemporary based in Buffalo, NY, BIOPHILIA pairs two artists using imagery and inspiration from the garden. “BIOPHILIA brings a new curatorial voice to Corning—It is an opportunity to experience a fresh perspective and to expand the dialog available to all parties involved. It is good for everyone, perhaps audiences most of all." says Ann Welles, Director of Exhibit A.
Rebecca Allan's recent work emerges from her observations as the plant records manager at a private garden north of New York City. She witnessed the labor and artistry of gardeners who cultivate and prune rare collections of Japanese maples, conifers, vegetable, and perennial gardens. Piles of cut branches, pruning tools, and debris became a visual leitmotif for the seasons of the year. Soil is also a unifying, metaphorical material that she regards as a life-sustaining substance. These works complement Allan's ongoing involvement as an advocate for land conservation through her role as an advisor to the Kentucky Natural Land Trust and the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies.
Amanda Besl equates gardening with curating, and with 'warfare.' The imagery in her meticulous realist paintings, also stems from her experiences in the garden. Her paintings depict rose petals that have been attacked by pests and 'ethereal bobbing corpses of Japanese beetles' that have succumbed to her counter-attacks. Besl's work poetically explores cultivation and destruction, ultimately developing fable-like commentary on very real human foibles. Paired with Allan’s gestural, saturated canvases, Besl’s work adds another lens with which to consider the relationship we have with our natural environment.
Rebecca Allan (b. 1962) is a New York-based painter, writer, and horticulturist known for her gestural and chromatically nuanced abstract paintings. Her inspirations include botany, geology, and landscape conservation. Allan has exhibited in the United States and abroad in over 40 solo and 23 group exhibitions. Recently her work was acquired for the permanent collection at the United States Embassy in Olso, Norway. She is also a contributing writer for publications including Fine Art Connoisseur, and artcritical.com. In 2012, Allan became a principal collaborator of The Crossroads Project: Rising Tide, a trans-disciplinary performance piece hat addresses climate change through the perspectives of environmental science, chamber music, and visual art.
Amand Besl (b. 1976) has shown widely in both Western New York, New York City, and Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Russia. Besl holds an MFA in Painting from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI, and a BFA from SUNY Oswego. Her paintings are part of several notable private and public collections, including the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo NY; Nichido Contemporary, Tokyo, Japan; the Burger Collection, Hong Kong; and the Tullman Collection, Chicago, IL. Besl works in the Arts Department at Nichols School in Buffalo as an Upper School Visual Arts teacher. Besl lives and paints in Buffalo, NY.
