Inside/Outside: Will Pergl + Shona Macdonald

August 8, 2012 - November 11, 2012

around_4_detail copy
Around 4 (Detail), Shona Macdonald

Inside/Outside: Will Pergl + Shona Macdonald
Striations and Structure
August 8-November 11, 2012
Opening reception: Wednesday, August 8, 5-7 pm.
Artists' talk: Thursday, September 20, 5:30 pm.
The opening reception and artist talk are both free and open to the public.

In this new iteration of the Inside/Outside series, we present two artists, Will Pergl and Shona Macdonald, who are interested in creating “resonant geographies.” They locate themselves in place and space by paying attention to what is around them, and each artist’s work is marked by a certain attentiveness to the mundane, the quotidian—the physical structures that form the background of our visual lives. In their current work, the prosaic, the man-made, and the humdrum are transformed into intricate and compelling objects. Will Pergl translates and elevates urban structures and objects--cell phone towers, fire hydrants, construction signs--into lyrical, rhythmic forms. Electrical plants, water towers, and propane tanks stranded in the desolate New Mexican desert inform Shona Macdonald’s work, created during a year-long residency in the isolated Southeastern corner of that state.

Pergl and Macdonald share a deeply rooted attachment to linear form and an interest in oddities and anomalies. In their work, man-made structures emerge as singular forms against urban Milwaukee skies or barren New Mexican scrub. Macdonald will show some of her New Mexican paintings, which explore towers, tanks and fences in barren landscapes, and two of her floor pieces, Desert/Floor and Waves, Shore. Pergl will be making a new outdoor work, and will be responding to different indoor spaces with wood sculpture that investigates the disconnect between the digital and physical realms.


Tower, Will Pergl

Shona Macdonald received her MFA in studio arts in 1996 from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her BFA in 1992 from Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. Solo shows include the Roswell Art Museum, Roswell, New Mexico (2011); Engine Room, Wellington, New Zealand (2010); Proof Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts (2009); Reeves Contemporary, New York (2008); Den Contemporary, Los Angeles (2007); Skestos-Gabriele, Chicago (2005); Galerie Refugium, Berlin, Germany (2002); and Fassbender Gallery, Chicago (1998 and 2000). She has participated in numerous group shows across the United States, as well as in Melbourne, Australia. Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, Art News and New American Paintings. She has been a visiting artist at over forty institutions, including Wimbledon College of Art, London, (1998); the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta, Canada (2002); Cornell University (2006); and Georgia State University, Atlanta (2007). Macdonald was a 2009 recipient of a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and was a 2010-11 Fellow at Roswell Artist-in-Residence in Roswell, New Mexico. She is an associate professor of studio art at the university of Massachusetts Amherst.

Will Pergl is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Pergl received his MFA from Cornell University and a BFA from Southern Illinois University. Pergl's sculpture, video and drawing have been shown in over 20 solo exhibits and 30 group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Current Tendencies II at the Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee and a site-specific installation at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Pergl’s video Rock was screened as part of the Milwaukee International One-Minute Video Fair at the Tate Modern in London, and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. His work has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers and Dialogue. Pergl is an associate professor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and has also taught at Cornell University, Grinnell College and at the University of New Hampshire at Durham.


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