On View
Yunior Rebollar
September 8 -
September 29, 2024
The Nemeth Art Center is thrilled to present our second annual exhibition of handmade clothing collection by Osage, Minnesota-based artist Yunior Rebollar. The museum has six unique fits on display from September 8 - September 29, 2024, and welcomes visitors to an end-of-season reception on Sunday, September 29,
noon - 4pm.
The artist reception will be celebrated in conjunction with the Art Leap (www.heartlandarts.org) community and participants.
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Artist Statement
Through this collection of textile works I have been exploring my artistic persona, aligning reality with abstraction, and using clothing to understand the self. The deep winters of the North have been my greatest inspiration for this collection - with textiles and forms oscillating between workwear, military cuts, with retro styles.
My drawing, painting and sewing practice all come out of the same soul at the same time. Making this work has been a practice of patience - waiting for one work to lead the the next manifestation.
Every design in this collection was created as a celebration of growth, accepting the multiplicity of one’s personality, while owning every change of mood as they merge to become the whole. This freedom to experiment is very much driven by my locale, here in the US, with distance between the uniformity of expectation of Cuba. Thriving between these opposing energies, the heat of my Cuban home and the deep cold of Minnesota. This duality is the balancing factor for my layered, overcomplicated personality and artistic ego.
Madeleine Bialke
The Long View
Exhibition on view through September 28, 2024.
The Long View presents ten paintings created by Madeleine Bialke during a two-month long residency at the Nemeth Art Center this spring and summer in Park Rapids, Minnesota. Some of the scenes depicted are memories from Madeleine’s childhood summers spent on her grandmother’s property in the woods around Straight River, south of Park Rapids, full of paths, ponds, dark woods, and meadows. Other compositions were born directly from the area around the residency house and studio, as well as Itasca State Park, where virgin timber—white and red pine— still stand. The past shapes how the present is seen. The trees depicted take on anthropomorphic qualities and build a narrative around familial relationships with titles like ‘Backbone,’ depicting a small tree growing tall and proud with a succession of older trees in infinite progression behind, and ‘Cradle,’ where tree branches hold the sun on a cold spring afternoon. Notions of life and death abound, as in ‘The Other Side,’ a scene of dead tamarack rot-resistant trunks looming out of the Straight River, the skeletons are still physical, lively and full of character. In these works Madeleine seeks to find new life in a place once thought lost, and aims to express that family ties, if strong enough, can live beyond time.
Madeleine Bialke’s paintings respond to our changing environment and reflect on her interest in nature and society.
The tradition of landscape painting has taken numerous forms, with a changing outlook ever since the 19th century held a milestone as artists became more concerned with the profound changes in the natural world, often as a result of human influence on nature. Bialke’s desire to address ecological concerns in her paintings originates from environmental connotations such as extinction, domestication, and global ecological devastation. However, it is also born out of hope, believing that the natural world might encourage empathy and serve as a gateway to further understanding.
Wayne Gudmundson
What Stillness Has to Offer
Artist Brad Kahlhamer works in a range of media including sculpture, drawing, painting, performance, and music to explore what he refers to as the “third place”—a meeting point of two opposing personal histories. Born in Tucson, adopted by a German-American family and raised in Wisconsin, Kahlhamer moved to New York City in his 20s, worked as an illustrator at Topps Comics, and joined the artistic milieu of the Lower East Side. Reimagining a subjective vocabulary through a neo-expressionist lens, his work includes references to 20th century abstract German Expressionism painting and navigates his tripartite identity, creating a visual language that straddles and expands notions of authenticity and representation within the greater discourse of Native American art.
In the NAC’s first (official) artist's summer residency, Kahlhamer was in residence in June in a studio/cabin north of Park Rapids where he produced new body of work. Kahlhamer holds a BFA from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Fond du Lac, and lives and works in NYC and Mesa, AZ.
Waverly Bergwin
July 1 - September 30, 2023
Waverly Bergwin is a non binary sculptor and writer who uses wire and organic plant matter to create legendary artifacts from other worlds. They have a deep interest in fairytales and fantasy stories, where they find the essence of the human will and the desire to escape the mundane.
Based in New York City, Waverly received their BFA from Pace University, and has worked as assistant and apprentice to Brad Kahlhamer since 2014, honing their craft under his supervision.
This activity is made possible by the generous support of our members, sponsors, and Minnesota voters through grants from the Region 2 Arts Council, thanks to legislative appropriation from the Arts and Culture Heritage Fund.