Tomorrow Forest
Opening reception for artist Aliene de Souza Howell June 1 2013, 6-8pm. Exhibit open through June 29, 2013.
Howell is a Brooklyn-based artist whose surreal linocuts strip the specificity of
human features to bring a focus to gesture, movement, animals, and inanimate objects.
Her work explores metaphors for human interactions and the natural world.
Howell says her work, “Searches out the uncanny, probing the absurd and the
commonplace in human behavior. It is about openness, observation, and moments of
cognition.” The concept of honesty and openness has interested Howell since
childhood, and she explores these themes in her art. Howell states, “Situated between
what is conscious and unconscious, I explore hybidizations of figures animals, and
trash in my work. By stretching the boundaries between reality and fiction through these
combinations and shifts in scale, I try to reflect the ever more blurry boundaries of our
natural world.”
The medium of linocut is essential in exploring “the tension between reality and fiction,
natural and unnatural, human, animal, and thing,” according to Howell. For Howell, the
final image is heavily influenced by the printmaking technique itself. She says, “By
utilizing the linocut, I am able to create shadow figures and doppelgangers, heightening
the psychological atmosphere and provoking the viewer’s psyche. The graphic and
monochromatic nature of relief printmaking also grounds the supernatural elements by
lending my images an austere, documentary character out of time and place. The slow,
deliberate process of carving a linocut and the image that develops is the result of an
intense form of physical excavation. The marks left document a somewhat harsh yet
whimsical process that mirrors the dual nature of the images.” Howell’s intense
precision is evident in the intricate lines of her prints that are used to show an interplay
of shadows and light. Howell’s work varies from realistic representations of nature to
surreal scenes, featuring anthropomorphism and symbolism.
Tomorrow Forest will be an installation exhibit with prints for sale onsite.
For more information, please visit www.onemilegallery.com
Additional press photos available. Please email onemilegallery@gmail.com
