Atlantic Works Gallery To Highlight New Member Works in March

Special to the Journal

Atlantic Works Gallery (AWG) announced that its March exhibition will be Contemporary Dialogues, a group show of three of the gallery’s newest members, Richard Dorff, John Greiner-Ferris, and Joan Ryan. The exhibition examines multiple forms of artistic dialogue, and opens Saturday, March 2 with a reception from 2:00 – 6:00 p.m. and closes Saturday, March 30.  There will be an AWG traditional “Third Thursday”—the gallery’s friendly, cultural community get-togethers—on March 21. 

Dorff is a visual artist and set designer who works in sculpture and installation, and in this exhibition his primary interest is with the space his work occupies and how that space and the objects themselves interact with one another. “By making these connections primarily through lighting and placement, objects and space create installations that extend beyond their own physical dimensions,” he explained.

On Saturday, March 23 at 3:00 p.m., in conjunction with Dorff’s work, Fort Point Theater Channel, where Dorff is co-artistic director, will present Stations of the XX , a work-in-progress performance piece using sound and movement.

Greiner-Ferris, a politically motivated visual artist who is informed by the theater, combines his love of images and words in assemblage. “You don’t lean back in a theater seat and say, ‘Entertain me.’ For the actors to do their jobs well, the audience has to be just as involved as the actors to give the actors something to respond to,” he said. “Nor do you walk into a gallery and just look at pictures on a wall. Pictures are something you engage with. The worst thing I could think that could happen to my art is if someone leaves the gallery and says, ‘Well, that was nice. Do you want to get some ice cream?’ I want people to discuss and fight about art.”

Ryan uses painting and drawing as a critical language to explore contemporary society, politics, and concepts of identity. In her most recent works, she incorporates a wide variety of images, cartoons, fairy tales, and political iconography combined with heightened color to confront the viewer at an intersection of a broad range of cultural moments. “This junction of imagery creates dynamic interplay and peculiar juxtaposition with the past and present,” she said. “We no longer live in a world of neat patterns , and my work imitates the way knowledge often comes to oneself, which is by fits and starts and indirection.”

Atlantic Works Gallery Contemporary Dialogues (details)

• Show opens Saturday, March 2; reception 2:00 – 6:00 p.m.

• “Third Thursday”; March 21, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

• Stations of the XX ; Saturday, March 23; 3:00 p.m.

• Show closes Saturday, March 30

Atlantic Works Gallery, 80 Border Street, Boston, MA 02128, now in its twenty-first year, is an artist-run collaborative space for art and ideas located in East Boston. The gallery is open to the public every Friday and Saturday, 2:00 – 6:00 p.m. For private viewing, contact contact@atlanticworks.org. For more information, visit https://atlanticworks.org/