Sur/Reality

Sur/Reality: Joyce Yamada, Nishiki Sugawara-Beda, David Olivant & Kahori Kamiya

Oct 28-Nov 14, 2021​

Exhibition Opening Reception: Friday, October 29th from 6-9 PM

​

Sur/Reality is a Fall 2021 exhibition presented at Amos Eno Gallery that feature works in dialogue with reality and its discontents. Curated by gallery director Audra Lambert, this exhibit features artworks by Joyce Yamada, Nishiki Sugawara-Beda, David Olivant and Kahori Kamiya. The show examines how reality/ies can be skewed and re-interpreted utilizing new media, photography, mixed media, painting, collage, sculpture, installation and performance art.

Sur/Reality posits how alternative views of reality can enhance our awareness of what is and what could be. In the 1927 Surrealist manifesto, André Breton shares his view that Surrealism seeks to combine the real world and dreams into a ‘super-reality,’ or an absolute reality. Surreal visions of the world integrate impulses from the unconscious into reality, forming a composite worldview reflecting our perception of the world around us.

Works on paper by Nishiki Sugawara-Beda harness the subconscious mind and spiritual intuition to produce monochromatic marks, and framing the natural world as both subtle and sublime. Kahori Kamiya’s work embraces textural dissonance commenting on life’s idiosyncrasies presenting works that comment on the distinctive experiences of breastfeeding. David Olivant’s works exert a vision of a world fragmented against itself. His collages are composed of often dissonant elements that present a comprehensive yet contradictory view of how we perceive reality. Paintings by Joyce Yamada reflect on our tumultuous relationship with the natural environment, mining a deeper understanding, through intuition and instinct, of humanity’s relationship to the surrounding landscape.

In a world demanding that we accept often-conflicting realities and assimilate them into a universal worldview,  Sur/Reality  shifts our focus away from the idea of truth, instead speculating on what it is that we take for granted, and exposing how it can be impermanent, faltering, and unreal.

​

Hyper/Reality and Sur/Reality are curated by Amos Eno Gallery Director Audra Lambert. Lambert holds an MA, Art History and Visual Culture from Lindenwood University, with a BA in Art History and minor in Japanese from St. Peter’s University. Her curatorial projects center Feminist and Queer art histories with an intersectional and intercultural lens. She has curated exhibits at the Center for Jewish History - Yeshiva University, Fountain House Gallery, The Living Gallery, Arsenal Gallery, Radiator Gallery, and others. She is curator-in-residence at The Yard, So. Williamsburg and Founder/Editor-in-Chief of ANTE mag, a platform for exhibition-making and art criticism in dialogue with artist-run projects.

​

Image: "Truncated Landscape_Roadtrip I” Joyce Yamada (2004) Acrylic on canvas, 60 x44”.