This is a past event.

Emmy Bright: Alone Together (views from the bottom of the pool)

When: Feb. 20-March 27, 2-8 p.m. 2021

David Klein Gallery is pleased to present Emmy Bright Alone Together (Views from the Bottom of the Pool). This is Bright’s third solo exhibition with the gallery and will feature a new body of work created during the COVID – 19 Pandemic.

In a recent conversation, Emmy Bright explored the origins of this new body of work and explained her elaborate working methods:

One of my favorite things to do this past summer was to sit at the bottom of the pool. I would sit on the bottom holding the lowest rung of the ladder. And I’d keep myself there underwater until I was out of breath. I love looking up through the water to a rippled surface - even though you can’t see much from there. It is a very quiet and still place - with little sound too, but a lot can be felt - the temperature and currents of water. And it is very blue, or blue green or even dark depending on the time of day.

I’m turning more and more to color for a certain kind of feeling. These drawings use line, movement, color, and removal to evoke intense emotion visually, rather than through text as I’ve done in the past. I use an elaborate inlay process where two sheets are colored, then repeatedly deconstructed and repaired with tape. What was cut from one panel appears in the other panel and vice versa. And the tape picks up tinted fingerprints, revealing my body and the work of repair.

Some pieces were colored with special markers and brushes, but more and more I’ve been using my hands to move the ink across the paper.

These works pay homage to places of beauty, visual sensuality, rest, and spaces for feeling and sensation. Amidst the fury of the now, I’m trying to make spaces to think, feel and breathe.

Emmy Bright works in drawing, writing, print and performance. In all of these mediums, she explores the problems of empathy and the problems of boundaries. She often works with opposing binaries, like aloneness and togetherness, parts and wholes, breakage and repair, distance and connection. By working with opposites, she draws attention to how they connect, intermingle and depend on one another. In this current body of work, these opposites manifest as two sides of each panel (left and right or top and bottom.) The work contains strong variegated strokes of monochromatic color that are repeatedly cut into then reassembled and then taped, and these acts of removal and repair feel especially symbolic in the difficulty of the now. Bright has produced projects and exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Internationally. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies at Ox-Bow School of Art, Vermont Studio Center, New Urban Arts, University of Hawaii, and Haystack School of Crafts. She is currently an Artist in Residence and Head of Print Media at Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI). She lives and works in Southwest Detroit.

Reserve Your Visit: Hourly time slots are available with a maximum of 10 visitors per hour. Book your visit at www.exploretock.com/davidkleingallerybirmingham. Our priority is to ensure that your visit is as safe and enjoyable as possible. We request that all visitors wear masks and practice social distancing. All surfaces are cleaned and sanitized several times daily and hand sanitizer is provided in the gallery.