571 Projects is pleased to announce visions, an exhibition of mixed media monoprints, emulsion transfers and lenticular prints by accomplished artist Dorothy Simpson Krause. This is Krause' fifth show with the gallery. Exploring the rising waters of climate change through the lens of Samual Taylor Coleridge's haunting poem, "Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment," (1797), the artist overlays imagery of passage ways, doors and other architectural openings, with tree branches and leaves reflected in a pool. The resulting works, on aluminum, copper, stone paper and lenticular, are arrestingly poetic. visions will be on view from August 8 through September 8, 2018 at 571 Projects, 56 Park Street, Stowe, VT. The artist will be present at the opening reception on August 9, 5-8 pm, at 56 Park Street, Stowe Vermont.
A painter, collage artist and print maker, Krause incorporates digital mixed media into her art. A recurring concern in her work is global climate change, and her layered landscapes memorialize the ephemeral beauty of the natural world. Krause explores the surreal through images of abandoned and submerged worlds: thresholds combined with imagery of leaves and branches reflected on the surface of a pool of water. Taking inspiration from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's haunting poem, "Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment" (1797), written after an opium-laced dream of an exotic and opulent palace, Krause's work highlights the mystery of architectural space and light: doorways, windows, and hallways from which light either shines or recedes into blackness. Ethereal and menacing, her work conveys the poetry of space and light, alluding to spiritual transitions, and ultimately, life and death. As in Coleridge's poem, beauty is underscored with violence, potential and real. These abandoned passages appear to be submerged below the reflective surface of water like the shifting memory of dreams, but also a statement about the impending disappearance of civilization as we know it, through the effects of global climate change. In Sinuous Rills (2010, pigment transfer with mixed media to aluminum, 24 x 24 in.) ghostly blue stairs lead toward a dark entrance, while a tracery of vegetation lies on the surface. Using the luminous and reflective qualities of the aluminum support, this work Working at a crossroads between cutting-edge digital processes and traditional methods, Krause is a pioneer in the use of digital media in art making, while maintaining her roots as a painter and collage artist. For one series in this body of work she uses a process that resembles Polaroid emulsion transfer. In another series she transfers monoprints onto uniquely prepared surfaces such as brushed aluminum and copper.
In addition to being Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts College of Art, Krause is also a member of Digital Atelier, an artists' collaborative. Her work has won many awards including the Smithsonian/ComputerWorld Technology in the Arts Award (1997), and the Kodak Innovator Award (2000). Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including The Landing Gallery (Rockland, ME); Evos Art Institute (Lowell, MA); the Attleboro Museum of Art (Attleboro, MA); The Judi Rotenberg Gallery (Boston, MA); 571 Projects (New York City). Her work is in many museum collections including The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Dalarna Museum (Dalarna, Sweden); The Smithsonian Museum of American Art (Washington, DC); Art Complex Museum (Duxbury, MA); State Museum (Novosibirsk, Russia); and The DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Framingham, MA). Krause was selected as the inaugural Helen M. Salzburg Artist-in-Residence at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University (2012).
