Roman Fine Art is pleased to announce Pastime/Time Passed, a selection of new work from Brooklyn-based artists, Lizzie Gill and Ciara Rafferty. Please join the artists for drinks and nibbles in the gallery
on Saturday, May 26, 6pm - 8pm at 66 Park Place, East Hampton, NY.
Color-splashed retro imagery, glamorized nostalgia and leisure studies of bygone eras comprise Gill and Rafferty’s hyper-stylized representations of wholesome values and pleasures of “The Good Old Days”. Gone is the time of The Great American Road Trip, with its novelty of futuristic hotels and motels that brought families together with blithe poolside lounging and Atomic Age idols. Gill and Rafferty draw inspiration from the 1950s and 60s, a time that for many Americans represented hope, postwar prosperity and freedom. With imagery of the American dream portrayed through old fashioned values and Hollywood romance, Gill and Rafferty explore the richly nostalgic context of the people, places and icons of days long passed that now exist in a liminal space. These images of carefree summer fun and untroubled leisure occupy the dreams and desires of our modern sensibilities as the contemporary world flies by in hyper speed.
Gill’s work presents retro American figures and activities in undefined spaces and times, floating in ether, surrounded and interrupted by shapes and color. Magazine friendly bodies and faces are cut out of their time capsules and transposed into an undefined context that prompts an unexpected exploration of innocence in pastimes and times passed. Her paintings and collages put a face to this nostalgia, connecting past, present and future.
Rafferty indulges the spaces left behind by an evolving and increasingly preoccupied society, where innovative design and accessible indulgence have been cast away over time in favor of lavish international expense. These public spaces, particularly the hotels and motels of the 1950s and 60s in Palm Springs, Hollywood and Miami, were designed to evoke a hopeful future by the architects who designed them for the American tourists who visited them. A shadow of the picture postcard, fun filled heydays that they once were, they awaken a desire to immerse oneself in the pleasure that they were created to give, but remain sad and often empty, stuck in time.
About the Artists:
Lizzie Gill (American, b. 1989, New York, NY) is a mixed media artist whose work explores themes of retro Americana in contemporary context. Through a variety of mediums she illustrates a time warp, composed of everyday life, human agency and “post-feminist” contemporary society. Gill received a BS in Fine Art from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. She also studied art at the Studio Arts Centers International in Florence, Italy. Gill's work has been featured in a number of gallery exhibitions and art fairs in New York, CA and in London, England. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, Allure, Wired and Glamour, Spain. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Ciara Rafferty (San Diego, California b. 1986) uses public architectural spaces to explore the psychology of perception, elevating a deceptively innocuous subject matter into something worthy of more thoughtful consideration. She received her BFA in Visual Arts and Art History from the University of San Diego in 2008 and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2016. Ciara has attended residencies at the Terra Foundation for American Art in Giverny, France and the Altos de Chavón School of Design in La Romana, Dominican Republic. Recent exhibitions have included WATER|BODIES, Southampton Arts Center, New York, Bombay Sapphire Gin’s: 10 Years, 10 Cocktails Retrospective Gallery, Agora Gallery, New York, Art Miami New York Pier 94, New York and Take Home A Nude at Sotheby’s, New York. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.