Dustpans, lawn chairs, oversized dice and futuristic ceramic forms are a few of the objects found in this year’s showcase of contemporary art in Casselberry.
“Experience Contemporary: A Wrench in the Gears” features five working Florida artists — Justin Quaid Grubb, Cynthia Mason, Noelle Mason, Hilary White and Matthew Wicks — all of whom challenge viewers to question everyday systems and societal organization. Through sculpture, painting, photography ceramics and textiles, these artists question the structures that govern our daily lives.
“Each artist is engaging with a certain system and sending it through their own process. What comes out, you understand the original a little bit, but it’s different,” said Justin Luper, the arts and marketing supervisor for the City of Casselberry. “The show involves how we take in our reality, how our reality is constructed, how our reality is filtered through us.”
Tampa-based artist Matthew Wicks takes everyday objects, like dustpans or laundry baskets, and strips them from their context, reorganizing them into a museum setting constructed as ceramics, porcelain or glass. In this show, he also deconstructs woven lawn chairs and reshapes them to the point where they are recognizable but unusable for their original intended purpose. Through this, “he reveals that understanding often begins when familiar objects cease to behave as expected,” Luper writes.
Artist Justin Quaid Grubb is photographed next to his sculptural works during opening night of the “Experience Contemporary: A Wrench in the Gears” exhibition at Casselberry Arts Center. (Chelsea Smith/Courtesy Casselberry Arts)
Justin Quaid Grubb, an artist and assistant professor of studio art at DeLand’s Stetson University, has work centered around “neo-Space Age design aesthetics, American consumer culture and queer theory.” Abstract ceramic shapes shown in the exhibition appear in adjacent video screens in an experimental documentary film that tries to make sense of the “American Dream” from the perspective of the other. In his “autobiographical” work, the ceramic forms operate as an extension of self for the artist.
The work of Hilary White questions idols and belief systems in the “Experience Contemporary: A Wrench in the Gears” exhibition at Casselberry Arts Center. (Patrick Connolly/Orlando Sentinel)
Hilary White, a Gainesville-based mixed media artist, brings theological themes and pop culture into her colorful collages and prints. 3D works affixed to the gallery walls read like small altars that question our modern idols and faith.
“Idols could be any heroes that you have or any beliefs that you have,” Luper said in discussing White’s work. “It’s about how we construct different belief systems and why different symbols carry meaning.”
Artist Cynthia Mason is photographed in front of her “soft paintings” during opening night of the “Experience Contemporary: A Wrench in the Gears” exhibition at Casselberry Arts Center. (Chelsea Smith/Courtesy of Casselberry Arts)
As a former architecture student, the grid was at the center of Cynthia Mason’s education and understanding. Her “soft paintings” are constructed from repurposed bedding, shredded documents, porcelain, plaster, fishing line and other found materials; her works suggest a grid that is deteriorating over time, altered by gravity and time.
“In my work, I loosen this rigid structure to allow gravity to take over so the work becomes soft, unstructured and sculptural,” she said. “I love seeing what happens when the materials repel or merge, ooze and crack, how they patina and shift to show their existence.”
Noelle Mason’s work examines systems of surveillance in modern society in the “Experience Contemporary: A Wrench in the Gears” exhibition at Casselberry Arts Center. (Patrick Connolly/Orlando Sentinel)
The work of St. Petersburg-based artist Noelle Mason involves taking surveillance imagery, including X-rays and satellite photography from the border patrol and putting the images through 19th-century processes by creating new cyanotypes and tin types. Her work was informed by growing up on the U.S.-Mexico border, near Tijuana.
“I intend for my work to take a hard look at the aesthetics of contemporary surveillance. What does the image reveal?” she said, “Does changing the form from the native computer screen to a 19th-century craft process reveal an internal contradiction within the image itself?”
Artist Matthew Wicks is pictured in front of one of his deconstructed lawn chairs during opening night of the “Experience Contemporary: A Wrench in the Gears” exhibition at Casselberry Arts Center. (Chelsea Smith/Courtesy Casselberry Arts)
In addition to her photographic works, Noelle Mason’s “Ground Control” presents itself as a handwoven wool tapestry depicting a satellite image of the U.S.-Mexico border, made by the Taller Mexicano de Gobelinos tapestry workshop in Guadalajara. The physical presence of the tapestry “engages with the viewer in tactile, visual and performative ways.”
In addition to the physical works on display in the Casselberry Arts Center, the space will host a companion event that engages guests through sound. On Sept. 26, “Constructing Reality,” by Stetson University professor Chaz Underriner, examines the perception of sound through the concept of the “Audio Reality Effect.”
Luper said these works aim to leave viewers with a new understanding, or perhaps thought-provoking questions, of their own everyday life.
,The work of artist Matthew Wicks takes objects out of their context and puts them in a museum setting in the “Experience Contemporary: A Wrench in the Gears” exhibition at Casselberry Arts Center. (Patrick Connolly/Orlando Sentinel)”I’m hoping that people come through and they’re able to interact with these works, to slow down. They see this system. They see how it’s kind of working, and it lets them reconsider those things. And it’s almost like a practice for your reality,” he said. “It’s not to dismantle these things. These artists aren’t telling you what to think; they’re just presenting their work and letting you think about it.”
Find me @PConnPie on Instagram or send me an email: pconnolly@orlandosentinel.com. Stay up to date with our latest travel, arts and events coverage by subscribing to our newsletters at orlandosentinel.com/newsletters.
If you go
“Experience Contemporary: A Wrench in the Gears” is on display through Nov. 13 at Casselberry Arts Center, 137 Quail Pond Circle in Casselberry. The center is open from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday. The “Constructing Reality” event, which is free and open to the public, is from 6-9 p.m. Sept. 26. More information: casselberry.org or @casselberryarts on Instagram