Winter 2011
Season is proud to present I Am Here, Mo Fo! featuring collages and photographs by Ruth Van Beek and oil paintings by Philip Miner.
Ruth van Beek’s collages produce disorienting scenes in which planes crash into paradise landscapes, animals deform, and people disappear. Combining stock photography and internet imagery, her compositions explore the contradictions between the domestic and the exotic, and demonstrate the artist’s fondness for family as well as her desire to travel and participate in a global world. Almost minimal, Van Beek’s acute sense of composition in these works feels at once contemporary and timeless. Van Beek graduated from Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2002 with a Master’s Degree in Photography; she works in a variety of mediums including photography, collage, animation and sculpture. She has exhibited at the Amsterdam Photography Museum, Foam_3h and the New York Photofestival, along with numerous solo and group exhibitions. Her work also regularly appears in various books and magazines. Ruth van Beek lives in Koog aan de Zaan, The Netherlands, and SEASON is honored to present her first show on the West Coast.
Ruth van Beek, Untitled, 2010, collage, 6 x 6.25 inches
Philip Miner makes similar aesthetic choices. In his paintings, he draws inspiration from the media and popular culture, as well as personal photographs, design, and art history. While his compositions are far from minimal, they use only that which is essential in order to explore the artist’s conceptual concerns—originality in the age of the instant download. Here Miner poses an inquiry to the notion of reuse, reference and precedence, and asserts that difference and meaning may be perceived within the reconstruction of many tropes of painting. The artist ultimately manipulates our ability to contemplate or analyze. Any painting is at one moment before us—demanding attention—only to instantly turn its back; to become coy as it slowly gives off information. Philip Miner lives in Seattle, Washington. He received his MFA in 2006 from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, and has exhibited at numerous venues in the Northwest.
Philip Miner, Untitled, 2010, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches