SAN ANTONIO, TX.- Ruiz-Healy Art is presenting Either or, Or both: Nate Cassie & Ethel Shipton. Based in San Antonio, Cassie and Shipton are a multidisciplinary creative couple, each known for exploring human perceptions of space and duration through a wide range of media and expression. As artist/curators, Cassie and Shipton have collaborated on Vacancy, a series of one-night projects in San Antonio, and have exhibited their individual works internationally. This is their first joint project at Ruiz-Healy Art. A catalog with essays by poets Michael Theune and Jenny Browne accompanies the exhibition.
Cassie’s work deals with what he terms “spaces in between,” the gaps that distance surface from volume, skin and structure, formal and intuitive systems. “ It’s the place where a rub or a nudge occurs—the space in between layers, the space in between object and reflection, the space in between myself and others,” he explains.
Born in New Jersey, and raised on the East Coast and in the Midwest, Cassie received his BA in Studio Art at Hope College, Holland in Michigan and his MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he now resides. Accomplished in painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and digital art, Cassie’s new paintings are inspired by cyclical systems and number theory, but are filled with gesture. His subtle manipulations of color and overlays of simple forms foregrounded over distant fields of map-like interstices play on the eye, invoking a moment of visual conflict in the viewer— and perhaps a bewildered laugh. The humor is intentional, constructed through Op Art manipulations that metaphorically echo social unease. The sculptures are derived from a cell phone photograph, abstractions that restore three dimensions in a reversal of the photograph’s flattening of the world. Referencing elements of Dada and surrealism, for Cassie, “they occupy the space between sadness and humor, light and dark, reflection and surface.”
Cassie has been reviewed in Art in America, Flash Art, Washington Post, and Art Lies; a past alumnus of Artpace San Antonio, he has exhibited internationally including at Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and City Museum, Queretaro, Mexico. His work is held by many private and public galleries including McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; Linda Pace Foundation, San Antonio and collections in Netherlands, Chile, Luxemburg, Turkey, as well as the U.S. Shipton was born and raised in Laredo, Texas and received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Like Cassie, her practice is informed by a strong conceptual base and encompasses a variety of expression. Through painting, installation, photography, and text, Shipton spotlights instants of clarity that flit by in the comings and goings of daily life. Past works have dwelt on urban scenes, language, and attempts to process information. Her current series featuring signage on rural roads, continues her concerns with movement, time—and timing. “It’s about exits and entrances and how the timing of every exit allows you to enter somewhere or some place,” says Shipton. “You suddenly find yourself arriving to a place you intended or to some place surprising and new. In the end, it’s about movement, the journey and the anticipation of the moment of arrival.”
Shipton has exhibited at numerous galleries, including Artpace San Antonio, Museum of Fine Art, Santa Fe; Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum, San Antonio; Shore Institute of Contemporary Art, Long Beach; Austin Museum of Art; Women and Their Work Gallery, Austin; Sala Diaz, San Antonio and Studio Santa Catarina, Mexico, D.F. Her works are in many private collections throughout the U.S. and Mexico.
An artist talk will be held at the gallery October 25th at 1 pm. Either or, Or both: Nate Cassie & Ethel Shipton will be on view through November 1, 2014.
