The Joi of Lyfe: Caroline Wells Chandler & Larry Lewis with works by Loren Britton

Fred Giampietro gallery is pleased to present The Joi of Lyfe, a two-person show featuring the Fauvistic stylings of Caroline Wells Chandler and collage artist Larry Lewis. Both artists use bold, pop-culture color and are invested in the reinvention and transformation of the figure.

Caroline Wells Chandler’s brightly colored hand-crocheted works explore notions of queerness and sexuality as well as the art historical canon. His characters are radically queer, and his representations of gender, like Larry Lewis, declare queerness as the normative state.

Chandler completed his foundation studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and received a BFA cum laude from Southern Methodist University in 2007. He has shown at numerous institutions including: Roberto Paradise (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Lord Ludd (PA), 11R (NY), The Hole (NY), Zurcher Studio (NY), Danese/Corey (NY), Vox Populi (PA), and the Stieglitz Museum (‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands) among others. Chandler is a 2011 MFA recipient in painting at the Yale School of Art where he was awarded the Ralph Mayer Prize for proficiency in materials and techniques. The artist lives in Queens.

Larry Lewis was born in 1919. Married to a nurse, he lived in Norwalk, Connecticut where he made his living as a secretary at United Oil Products. From the 1960s until almost his death in 2004, Lewis worked on a series of over 100 large, extraordinary hand-painted decades he worked in seclusion, hardly showing the work to anyone. Larry Lewis left behind no written explanation of what it was all about. His extraordinary work explores social and trans-gender issues as well as repression and issues of sexuality.collaged scrapbooks. The books were created out of photocopied and inked images of Hollywood divas, gender bending Victorian figures, newspaper advertisements, product labels, and favorite works of art. Over those four decades he worked in seclusion, hardly showing the work to anyone. Larry Lewis left behind no written explanation of what it was all about. His extraordinary work explores social and trans-gender issues as well as repression and issues of sexuality.

Loren Britton is an artist who works to create hybrid things that exist between: drawing, painting and sculpture. Their work exists in relationship to body and seeks to upend a normative relationship to language.

Britton received their BFA (Painting) & BA (Art History) from SUNY Purchase, and are currently an MFA candidate in painting at the Yale School of Art. Britton has exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions at Boston University (Boston), Scott Charmin Gallery (Houston), LTD Gallery (Los Angeles), Vanity Projects (Miami), Field Projects (New York), Pelham Arts Center (Pelham) & The College of William & Mary (Williamsburg) and internationally at the Schwules Museum (Berlin, Germany) and Siena Arts Institute (Siena, Italy). Britton has participated in residency programs at: Eastside International (Los Angeles, USA), Studio Kura (Fukuoka, Japan), and Starry Nights (New Mexico, USA).