Uprise Art
PULSE Miami Beach 2018

For PULSE Miami Beach, Uprise Art will share new works from photographer Martina Lang and painter Aschely Vaughan Cone that negotiate space and color.

Martina Lang’s two series The Object and Blind Escape were both created using staged studio photography, using elaborate sets made from paper. Blind Escape includes constructed blinds, a recognizable object found in offices around the globe. This unity has the potential to homogenize individuality, turning work spaces into non-places. By juxtaposing these with living plants that are seeking light, Lang gently suggests thoughts of departure and escape. Her series The Object was inspired by the Japanese Shinto tradition where a sacred object, most commonly a mirror or stone, are often obstructed from view for so long that the identity of the item is entirely forgotten and they are referenced only as 'the object'. Lang imbues her images with the same sense of meditative mystery through meticulously constructed, monochrome models, that focus on a center circled in light that remains hidden to the viewer.

Aschely Vaughan Cone's paintings investigate ideas of doubleness in her paintings that feature a similar attention to color and thresholds; entry and obstruction, access and denial, patterns overlaid and intersecting, acts of veiling and solidification. Cone returns over and over to motifs of arches and shields, which flip ambivalently between positive space and negative space, object and void. The artist escalates this opposition with her focus on the ground of her paintings and subtle variations of color. Her large-scale works reinforce an association with architecture, literal passageways, and obstructions.

Martina Lang's two series The Object and Blind Escape were both created as staged studio photography, using elaborate sets made from paper to approximate views that resemble a kind of immaculate, airbrushed, or computer-rendered space. The Object, specifically, was inspired by the Japanese shinto tradition where, in many cases, shrines constructed around long-obscured items become the subject of reverence, and the items themselves are forgotten, referenced only as 'the object'. Lang's images duplicate this sense of intrigue and make reference to this slippery site of veneration through meticulously constructed, monochrome models, each of which focus on an unseen center circled in light.

Aschely Vaughan Cone's paintings investigate ideas of doubleness that feature a similar attention to color and thresholds: entry and obstruction, patterns overlaid and intersecting, acts of veiling and solidification. Her large-scale works reinforce an association with architecture and literal passageways and obstructions.Cone returns over and over to motifs of arches and shields, which flip ambivalently between positive space and negative space, object and void, which the artist escalates with her focus on the ground of her paintings and subtle variations of color.