Dream Sellers
By Amy Boone-McCreesh & Alex Ebstein
September 3 - October 17, 2020
VICTORI + MO is pleased to present Dream Sellers, a two-person exhibition of new works by Alex Ebstein and Amy Boone-McCreesh. This exhibition will open on September 3 and will remain on view through October 17.
Consider the life peddled to you - through pervasive cultural bias, gender stereotypes, and capitalism. The way your home looks, how you clothe yourself, access to nature and beauty. These are all topics ripe in the works of Alex Ebstein and Amy Boone-McCreesh. Dream Sellers examines the markers of success through the lens of societal pressures. Artists have long held mirrors to the worlds in which they live and Ebstein and Boone-McCreesh visually unravel what it means to exist today in a series of tactile, mixed media works. Topics including body shape preferences, advertising, slick store displays, and domestic life are pulled apart to question long held assumptions on class and the notion of upward mobility.
Alex Ebstein’s work, created in small series, expands upon her work transforming yoga mats and powder coated metal into images of eyes, curves, limbs - literal and abstracted. Much of the work has been made in a small, apartment studio since quarantine began and evinces a reflection of ad-punctuated virtual windows into the outside world in contrast with the solitary reality of an isolated routine. Figments and artifacts of glamour and group fitness hover over tactile, surfaces, embellished with embroidery, acrylic and other materials. In a world mediated through social media, aspiration and intention mingle with the dreamy, indulgent space of diary, time capsule and stasis. As the ways in which we interact are interrupted and reexamined, constraining pressures such as female competition and trends in health and beauty become flimsy symbols disengaged from their power to divide.
Amy Boone-McCreesh utilizes maximal aesthetics and visual tropes of grandeur in a new series that conflates window views and consumption of luxury goods. Her formative experiences growing up in a low socio-economic setting have led to further examinations of markers of success and how they manifest visually. The commodified access to beauty and nature mix with a knee-jerk opposition to notions of “good” taste in her colorful mixed-media spaces. Hand-cut collaged works on paper are informed by the labor of craft and domesticity. This is countered by the precise geometry of interior spaces and the machine-cut, synthetic materials present in the curtain-like window hangings and wall charms. Borrowing from the world she inhabits, Boone-McCreesh aspires to visually delight while questioning the prominent tastes of cultural acceptance.
Together, Alex and Amy probe at the standards and aesthetic perimeters that ensnare women, asking questions through their visual vocabularies. Mimicking the culture being sold to them, they aim to create “beauty” while testing the exclusionary limitations of the concept. The moving target of success, as it relates to the pressure to have a certain home or domestic life, fitness goals, trend conformity and other slippery milestones, tinges their work with an inescapable anxiety. Underscoring their mutual fascination with brand collaborations, limited editions and the mechanism of scarcity in art, beauty and fashion, the artists worked together to create a set of small sculptures that straddle high and low aesthetics.
About Alex Ebstein
Alex Ebstein is an artist and curator born in New Haven, CT and currently based in Baltimore, MD. She received her MFA from Towson University in 2015 and her BA in Studio Art from Goucher College in 2007. Her recent solo and two-person exhibitions include De Novo Gallery in Washington, DC, Steel House Projects in Rockland, Maine, Terrault Gallery in Baltimore, MD, Victori + Mo Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, Cuevas Tilleard, New York, New York, Frutta Gallery in Rome, Italy, and Kent Place Gallery in Kent, New Jersey. She has been featured in a number of group exhibitions including Trestle Gallery, Greenpoint Terminal Gallery, Crossing Collective, Guerrero Gallery and Loyal Gallery. Her work has received write-ups in The New York Times, FastCo, Self Magazine, BmoreArt, Baltimore Beat, City Paper, Beautiful Decay and Aft F City. In addition to her studio practice, Ebstein is the founder and director of three galleries in Baltimore since 2009; Nudashank, Phoebe, and Resort. Ebstein is currently the Director of Exhibitions and Curator at Goucher College and adjunct faculty at Maryland Institute College of Art.
About Amy Boone-McCreesh
Amy Boone- McCreesh is an artist born in Maine and currently based in Baltimore, MD. She received her MFA from Towson University in Maryland, and shortly thereafter was awarded a two-year Hamiltonian Artist Fellowship in Washington, DC. Her work has been included in exhibitions across the country, notably at Mixed Greens (NY, New York, 2015), Transmitter Gallery (Brooklyn, NY, 2015), Transformer Gallery (Washington DC (2015), Terrault in Baltimore, MD, and supported by institutional exhibitions at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, Goucher College, in Baltimore, MD and Marymount University in Alexandria, VA. She was awarded the Hamiltonian Artist Fellowship in Washington, DC and is the two-time recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council individual artist award. Amy’s large-scale works have been acquired by the Department of State in the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico (Art in Embassies, 2013), Facebook (2019), and Capital One (2018). Her work is featured in New American Paintings (issues 106 and 118) and Handmade Life, published by Thames and Hudson (2016). Amy is currently adjunct faculty at Maryland Institute College of Art as well as the founder of INERTIA, an online platform for artistic dialogue.