Heather Sherman
Feral



Reception: Wednesday, January 27th, 6 to 8 pm
Exhibition: January 27 to February 20, 2010

Sloan Fine Art, in conjunction with Greene Contemporary, is pleased to present Feral by Heather Sherman.

Three years ago, Heather Sherman purchased a mysterious bag of Kodak slides (meticulously organized and labeled “Puppies,” “Vacation,” “Christmas,” etc.) from a thrift store in Florida. While buzzing and clicking through them in her 70’s era slide projector, the artist found that her voyeuristic exploration of these people’s lives exposed connections to, and elements of, her own past. In a photograph of lawn chairs, she saw the New Year’s Eve spent drunk and alone, watching neighbors cheerfully light fireworks while quietly hating them. In a slide of two German Shepherds eating from a woman’s hand, she remembered the day she witnessed her mother being attacked by the family dog. And in their fenced-off New Jersey backyard, she envisioned the golf course she grew up on, and regularly vandalized - a bored, rich, gay teenager acting out in the suburbs of Orlando, Florida. In Feral, Sherman projects her psychology onto these strangers and their memories, using them as a vehicle to confront her own personal history. Some of the stories are fictional, some autobiographical, but all reinforce the need for connectedness and feelings of alienation so rampant in, and integral to, suburbia.

Sherman earned her BFA at Ringling School of Design in Florida before fleeing to New York where she will complete her MFA at NYU this year.

Running concurrently with Feral, in the front gallery, is Black Forest / White Lightning, new works by Nathan Skiles.

Through his gallery Greene Contemporary, and now as an independent curator and consultant, Jonathan Greene strives to discover, encourage and present emerging and mid-career artists with a commitment and dedication to creating innovative work in a wide range of mediums. Both Nathan Skiles and Heather Sherman exhibited previously at Greene Contemporary. This is the first collaboration between Greene Contemporary and Sloan Fine Art.

Image: "Umbrella," 2009, 38" x 50," oil on paper