Back to Nature, 2009 by Carrie Marill

We hope you'll join us tonight at 6:00 p.m. for the opening of Carrie Marill's second solo-show at Jen Bekman Gallery. In her newest series, Visual Aides, (from which her two most recent editions were sourced), Carrie expands her signature style to include references of colorful nostalgia of 1950s educational posters. However, her interpretations of these idyllic images have been subtly painted over to account for environmental and social changes in the last 60 years.

Carrie writes:

In 2006, I was traveling through France and found brilliantly colored, printed "visual aides" at a flea market. Originally, these visual aides were didactic drawings used in classrooms in the late 1950s to illustrate different aspects of the world—farming, industry and the natural world—for children.

I scanned and reproduced these images on watercolor paper and updated them to reflect current events that relate to the state of our environment and how humans anthropomorphize the planet. The chosen events were inserted into the drawings using a style similar to that of the original works, so the completed image is a "Where’s Waldo" of what has evolved and devolved environmentally and socially since the 1950s.

If you're interested in reading more about Visual Aides, Allison Arieff, founding editor of Dwell and contributor to GOOD and The New York Times, has written a great essay to coincide with the exhibition titled Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible: Carrie Marill [pdf].

Visual Aides
8 works on paper by Carrie Marill
Opening Reception: Friday March 26, 2010 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
On View: March 27, 2010 through May 8, 2010
Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
New York City, 10012

Flying, Shipping and Selling by Carrie Marill

If you can't make it to NYC and happen to be in Dallas, Texas, another exhibition of Carrie's work features fourteen portraits of animals she has eaten. She writes that is is a "meditation on the factory farming of commodified animals that are a regular staple of the American diet as well as the exotic fare offered more and more on restaurant menus." The Splendid Table, opens tomorrow, Saturday, March 27th at Conduit Gallery.

The Splendid Table
14 works by Carrie Marill
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 27th, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
On view: March 27th through April 30th
Conduit Gallery
1626 C HI Line Drive
Dallas, TX 75207

And, if you're not in Dallas either, you can also see lots of Carrie's work online, in addition to her nine (yes, 9!) editions on 20x200 (featuring plenty of birds, colorful abstraction, and house plants).

Be Realistic Demand the Impossible by Carrie Marill