Exhibitions :: Past Exhibitions

Iraqi artist Vian Sora paints a narrative of travel and culture

Opening: April 2nd, 2010 5-9pm
Through: May 14th, 2010

Vian Sora, an internationally recognized artist from Baghdad and now based in Louisville, will exhibit her works at The Green Building Gallery beginning April 2nd.

Sora’s paintings will blend her journeys through all parts of the world, from Iraq, to Turkey, to Dubai, and to the US.  Primary works will showcase the vibrant history of Iraq, especially the legends and landscape of her homeland. Her work has been described by her collectors as “mystical, transformative and living adventures”. Her paintings are designed to reach out to the viewer and bring them into another place and time with majesty and projection. 

Using bold colors, golds, and ancient symbols, she transforms the canvas into living legends of journeys in a Middle Eastern land where upheaval is ordinary, but compassion and family ties are paramount. Sora works primarily with oils, but utilizes mixed media and engraving techniques to create three-dimensional textures on canvas.   The work is primarily expressionist and figurative, with contemporary abstract images used to convey moods and scenes from antiquity.  Her works demonstrate the influences of the East and West on her painting and upon her existence.

Sora has exhibited in Dubai, Baghdad, Rome, Istanbul, Paris, Kuwait City, Sweden, Denmark, and Saudi Arabia, amongst others. From car bombings to threats to her family, and through extreme loss and pain, she has painted and filled the canvases with remembrance and songs of cultures still in preservation and experiencing resurrection. Hers is the story of many Iraqis who find that they must establish new lives for themselves in new lands, but still strive to preserve their culture and their identity.  Sora’s story is one of sadness and joy, of upheaval and renewal and most of all of love. Today, she finds herself working on paintings to bridge the divide of cultures, history and beliefs.

Sora says, “My new home here in Louisville crystallizes my journeys and ignites a new desire in me to bring friendship and love to all those willing to listen and lessons for every culture.” 

More information about the artist can be found at her web site at www.viansora.com.

Past Exhibitions

Vadis Turner offers her modern Dowry to Louisville

Opening: February 5th, 2010 5-9pm
Through: March 19th, 2010

Complementing the saturated sweetness and flourish of romanticism surrounding February, NYC’s Vadis Turner will exhibit her confectionary work at The Green Building Gallery, opening February 5th.  Dowry, her second solo exhibit in Louisville, will feature work playing on the roles of love, marriage, feminism, craft and sexuality in society. The show will run through March 19th.

With Dowry, Turner examines the transformative legacy in handmade objects, historically made by women, by creating a collection of contemporary heirlooms. The pieces re-imagine conventional  handicrafts and rites of passage meant to represent the values of Turner’s generation. Heirloom objects include erotic swings made from vintage quilts, human organs made from discarded jewelry, and Faberge-like eggs made with human hair. Just as dowries were traditionally exchanged for societal and marital advancement, Turner’s Dowry will be sold or traded, this time for professional gain.

A Nashville, Tennessee native, Turner received her BFA in Painting and MFA in Studio Teaching from Boston University. Shortly after finishing school she began experimenting with media that connected to women’s roles such as wax paper, panty hose, tampons and quilts. Using her palette of found materials, she has created a visual language where everyday wares are transformed into vehicles for social commentary.

Turner has exhibited in Paris, New York, the National Gallery in Prague and has been featured in Vanity Fair (May, 2009). She is an artist member of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center Feminist Art Base and is in the permanent collection at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Other upcoming solo exhibitions include a show at the Quirk Gallery in Richmond, VA.

Gibbs Rounsavall scratches the surface of an organic process with new work

December through January, 2010
Opening: December 4th, 2009, 5-9pm

"Over the years, local contemporary artist Gibbs Rounsavall’s work has stretched from the polychromatic, linear pieces that "define eye candy" (The Courier-Journal, 2005), to graphite and line that inspire “intellect” (Leo Weekly, 2008) and has always had themes of science and nature running underneath. Rounsavall finds himself wandering down new paths with “Unearth the Divine”, a new series of work that strays from his previous color palette and construction but continues to explore those original ideas. 

With “Unearth the Divine”, Rounsavall found himself focusing directly on process, opening himself fully to the channels of discovery and surprise. “Reflecting back on these past two years, it has become apparent that discovery involves a sense of unfolding in time and requires one to be equally active and passive”, says Rounsavall. Mix this with inspiration from another experiment with nature, Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider and the search for the Higgs Boson particle, and the result is a series of large, black enamel, subtractive paintings with rippled, wave-like markings that literally scratch the surface of a new, organic direction in his work. 

A show in two parts, The Green Building Gallery will house work from his more familiar genre of colorful pattern and design, and also invite the visitor to experience his process in a recreated studio space.  The larger, organic studies will be exhibited at 720 East Market Street, next door to The Green Building. The rough texture of the building’s unfinished walls should provide an appropriate space for the process behind these paintings.

For this show, the 720 East Market space will hold hours on Saturdays and Sundays from 11am-4pm or Monday through Friday by appointment. The Green Building Gallery hours will remain Monday through Friday, 9am-6pm or by appointment.

The Green Building & The Green Building Gallery will be closed for the holidays starting December 19th and will reopen January 4th. Holiday hours at 720 East Market Street will be posted at that location.

Valerie Fuchs explores time and the temporal with “Concrete Video”

Opening: October 2nd, 2009, 5-9pm
Through: November 25th, 2009

Conceptual artist Valerie Fuchs explores time and temporal forms in her upcoming show “Concrete Video”, opening October 2nd. The show examines the transformation of moving video images and light into a physical form or sculpture. Using video stills as part of specifically visual work or physical form, Fuchs believes it allows for the still itself to become more defined as a “medium”, rather than just unseen vehicles for movement.  

In her corresponding essay, “Towards a New Form: Concrete Video, an exploration on time and temporal forms”, Fuchs states:

“Concrete Video begins by assuming a total responsibility before the moving image language, accepting the premise that the sequence of images is an indispensable nucleus of communication. It refuses to absorb stills/sound/light as mere indifferent vehicles - taboo-tombs in which convention insists on burying the idea that film and video have a direct influence on our perceptions and our physical manifestations of reality...”

The show will express these thoughts through both visual and audio conceptual ideas, sometimes formed into one piece or several and then further transcended from light into the physical or the sculptural. 

Louisville based, Fuchs has an M.F.A. in Time Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.Arch from the University of Kentucky. Her current and upcoming shows include: Boys Don't Cry, Kentucky Short Film & Video Showcase, 21c Museum Hotel (Sept. 15th), Art Dialogues, Speed Art Museum (Sept. 17th), H2O: Film on Water, Great Rivers Arts, Bellows Falls, Vermont (Aug-Oct), Stripped, Sun Valley, Idaho (Oct-Dec), video collaboration with musician Ben Sollee (Oct 23rd), Sacred Water, Louisville Visual Arts Association (Nov), and Winter Count Solo Show, Indiana University Southeast (Jan-Feb 2010).

22 Louisville Artists Contribute to Children’s Counting & Art Book Benefiting Art Sparks

Opening: September 4th, 2009 5-9pm
Through: September 25th, 2009
            
Louisville, KY- The Green Building Gallery, in conjunction with Holland Brown Books, will present a group exhibition opening Friday, September 4th featuring the 22 artists who contributed to Louisville Counts! A Children's Counting & Art Book. The book is a fundraiser for The Laramie L. Leatherman Art Learning Center (Art Sparks Interactive Gallery), the children's gallery at The Speed Art Museum.
            
Louisville Counts! A Children's Counting & Art Book, is a project that assembled willing Louisville-based artists to create unique, child-friendly pieces of art to accompany 22 pieces of Louisville trivia. Each piece corresponds with a specific number, from 0-21, encouraging the reader to count their way through the book using everything from Muth’s Candies to baseball bats to Olmsted parks and even disco balls! Participating artists include:  

The original artworks, on display September 4th - 25th, will also be sold in a silent auction beginning September 4th, and ending at the close of the show, September 25th. All proceeds from all sales of the book, as well as the gallery’s share of the sales of the corresponding artworks, go directly to Art Sparks. 

“Art Sparks fosters a sense of joy and wonder, inspiring a world of imagination and play. All ages will love exploring the Louisville artists featured in Louisville Counts.  The sense of visual playfulness makes it a fun book to share with the whole family”, says Cynthia Moreno, Director of Education at The Speed Art Museum.

The show will end with a closing party on September 25th from 5-9pm at The Green Building.

Sarah Lyon Debuts New Work with Solo Show

Opening: July 3rd, 2009 5-9pm
Through: August 28th, 2009

The Green Building Gallery is pleased to present a series of new work by local photographer Sarah Lyon. Debuting material prepared in 2009, the show features both black and white and color photography but goes beyond to explore bronze casting and installation.

Lyon’s fourth solo show in Louisville has her exploring everything from her city and country to the local Goodwill and a nearby foundry. Inspiration came from a challenge she gave herself to overcome distracting habits that had infringed upon her art making in the past. “It’s amazing how productive I realized I can be when every evening is not taken up by drinking,” says Lyon.

Lyon explored the lost wax casting process with a piece titled "30,000 Miles", a bronze casting of her old motorcycle boots which she wore throughout four cross-country motorcycle journeys starting in the summer of 2003. “During those motorcycle trips I pursued photography projects that established my identity as an artist. To express the enduring, personal influence of those journeys I created a manifestation to outlast me”, Lyon says of the piece. In another subject, Lyon hung a large map of Louisville on the wall and threw darts to determine where she would go to photograph. The result is a grid of 50 black and white photographs taken around the city. In deciding how to frame this project, she created “Somewhere Over the Framebow”, a contemporary assemblage of white-painted picture frames, ranging from whimsical to the ordinary, in which she explores feelings of nostalgia, emptiness, curiosity and playfulness.

The group of work will also include four large color prints of spaces around Louisville, a continuation of her “Louisville Portraits and Landscapes” series.

Lyon was born in Louisville and received her BFA from Miami University of Ohio. Her self published 2007, 2008 and 2009 Female Mechanics Calendars have received great response in the United States and internationally as the first of their kind. Her work has also been published in Esquire, Hutch, Trespass, Sustain, Bejeezus, Truckers News, Urban Moto, BMW Owners News, Curve, Today's Woman, and Louisville Magazine. Lyon lives and works in Smoketown and teaches black and white photography at Bellarmine University.

Melissa Farlow – “Private Thoughts”
Acclaimed National Geographic and Courier-Journal photographer Melissa Farlow returns to Louisville.

Opening: June 5th, 2009 5-9pm
Gallery Hours: 9am – 6pm, Monday - Friday

Cloistered Novices Peru, 1998

Farlow will showcase a collection of photographs taken from stories covered over the last 15 years.

This exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Louisville Photo Biennale, which focuses this year upon former students and faculty of Louisville’s Center for Photographic Studies.

A Paoli, Indiana native, Farlow served as a faculty member at the Center for photographic studies. While in Louisville, she was part of the Courier-Journal / Louisville Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for photographic coverage of desegregation. 

Her images have won multiple awards in the Pictures of the Year competition and other contests. Farlow received her B.A. in journalism from Indiana University and her masters from the University of Missouri, where she also taught photojournalism.

Steve Keene

Opening:  April 3rd 5-9 pm | Through: May 29th, 2009
Gallery Hours: 9a - 6p Monday - Friday

Here is everyone’s chance to be a collector.  The Green Building Gallery brings Brooklyn’s Steve Keene – and his affordable art - to Louisville!

Keene firmly believes that art should be an interactive and accessible experience.  He’ll come to The Green Building Gallery armed with thousands of canvases, and dive headfirst into a weeklong interactive painting experience.

Keene will be working in the gallery beginning Tuesday, March 31st to create works specifically for -and inspired by- Louisville, and you’re welcome to come watch. 

Time Magazine’s Steve Lopez calls Keene an “assembly line Picasso.”  Keene paints in multiples, often working around the clock to create his pieces, which he then sells at prices as low as three dollars!

Steve says, “I want buying my paintings to be like buying a CD: it’s cheap, it’s art, and it changes your life, but the object has no status. Musicians create something for the moment, something with no boundaries and that kind of expansiveness is what I want to come across in my work.”
 
Keene has been creating in this style since the early nineties, and has created CD cover art for artists including Pavement and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy.  His interactive exhibitions have taken place in the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, the Linden Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Australia, and the Czech Centre in London.

Read the Metro Mix Louisville article here.

Bryce Hudson

Opening:  February 6th, 2009  5- 9 pm | Through: March 27th, 2009

The exhibition will open in conjunction with the release of Bryce’s new book, Bryce Hudson: Explorations in the Shadow of Pop Culture from Holland Brown Books. The artist will be present at the opening for discussion and book signing.

The Green Building Gallery is proud to present 25 exceptional works of contemporary art by Bryce Hudson. In October of 2008 Hudson was invited by NY Arts Magazine to be an artist in residence at their contemporary arts project space NY Arts Beijing in Beijing, China. There, he started work on his Holding Pattern series. Exhibiting along side this series is an on-going body of work titled Equilibrium (Deco), which Hudson started in early 2008. Hudson lives in Louisville and has an extensive exhibition history. His work is in many important private and corporate collections in the US, South America and China.

In the Holding Pattern Series Hudson’s subjects are young women in their mid 20s to late 30s. Superimposed upon their faces are chromatic decorative patterns, the combination of which brings to the surface ideas of symmetry, objects of decoration and femininity. Furthermore, the experience of being a young woman in modern society and the associated pressures are examined.

In the Equilibrium (Deco) Series Hudson has begun to juxtapose two movements in the history of art and design – Minimalism and Rococo – opening up each piece to the viewers’ own interpretations on the depths of decoration, pop art, trend and pattern. Hudson’s work frequently explores balance, symmetry and harmony and their relationship to contemporary society in a post-painterly minimalist style.

Julia Christensen

Opening:  December 5th, 2008  5- 9 pm | Through: January 30th, 2009

When you move out of your house, there's usually someone eager to buy it from you and make it their own. But what if you're moving out of one giant 100,000 square foot room?
 
In her book Big Box Reuse, and accompanying photographic exhibition, Julia Christensen takes us on a road trip across America to look at what becomes of the spaces superstores leave behind when they move out.  These warehouse-like buildings have found their place in the built landscape since the first Wal-Mart, Kmart and Target stores opened in 1962. 
 
Since the spring of 2004, Christensen has driven over 75,000 miles, visiting converted "big boxes" and meeting the people who are transforming these massive shells into useful structures for their community. She has documented what happened to the structures, the parking lots, and the surrounding communities.  She has found out who wanted to reuse the buildings, why and how. What Christensen has discovered is that examining the big box building provides a wealth of information that will help us steer the future of our landscape with more informed decision-making processes. Among the things Big Box Reuse points out: despite the harmful construction of the big box, reuse is a powerful tool in the fight against the increasing dangers of sprawl. For every building that is reused, a new one does not go up; a monumental victory, as the National Trust for Historic Preservation recently indicated the energy used to destroy older buildings in addition to the energy used to build new ones could power the entire state of California for 10 years (LA Times, October 2008).
 
From churches, retail stores and charter schools to a courthouse, senior center and the Spam museum, Big Box Reuse shows the many practical reuses of buildings that initially seemed suited for one function. 

Cynthia Reynolds :: small world

Opening: November 7th, 2008, 5-9pm | Through: November 25th, 2008

The Green Building Gallery announce their inaugural show, featuring new work by Louisville's own Cynthia Reynolds.

Reynold's 'small world', her latest effort, explores past and present conceptions of the world in which we live, and the differences and striking similarities that exist in these seemingly disjointed domains.

Miss Reynolds' work has been featured in exhibitions around the country. Many have been curated by some of the top names in the art scene today: Guggenheim curator Robert Rosenblum chose her work for the 17th National Viridian Artists Juried Exhibition and Adrian Sudhalter from MOMA was the juror for Expo 25. Other curators who have selected or juried her work include Cheryl Brutvan from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, Kathleen Kvern from the Walker Art Center, Stephen Phillips from DC's Phillips Collection; and Janet Bishop from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

She studied at Centre College (winning the Art Prize), Kansas City Art Institute (where her work is represented in their permanent collection), and the University of Washington in Seattle (MFA, Ceramics, 1997). She was an artist-in-residence at Louisville Stoneware (2003 to 2006),and was awarded a Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith IndividualArtist Fellowship in 2006. Cynthia has completed commissions for Louisville's J.B. Speed Art Museum (Education Department), where she has also run workshops.