MARIEL CAPANNA + WILLIE WAYNE SMITH
April 07 – May 20, 2017
Opening Reception April 07, 8-11 pm
Central Park is pleased to announce Mariel Capanna + Willie Wayne Smith.
For the exhibition, Capanna will present new works in fresco. Drawing upon research into Mexican and American folkways, the artist’s work undermines the staid character of the old world technique by commemorating colloquial imagery.
In his first showing in Los Angeles, Smith will present a group of cast and airbrushed sculptures. Investigating the boundaries of tromp ’l’oeil, at times from the imagined perspective of an artist other than himself,
Smith’s work is often realized as the site of fervent activity.
Configured on the upper reaches of the gallery walls and set into the floor that has been raised and tiered for the exhibition, the installation aims to highlight recurrent processes of excavation in the two bodies of work.
Mariel Capanna (b. 1988 Philadelphia, PA) lives and works in Philadelphia. She received her BFA and Certificate of Fine Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she was awarded the Cresson Travel Scholarship. A 2013 Kittredge Fund grant supported her year-long cross-country road trip during which she collected imagery about Americans’ relationship to landscape and local geography. Capanna studied fresco painting under conservator Lorenzo Casamenti in Florence, Italy on a 2014 Independence Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship. In 2016 she was Artist in Residence at the Guapamacátaro Art and Ecology Residency in Michoacan, Mexico; attended the Mountain School of Art in Los Angeles, and was a Resident Artist at the Tacony Library and Arts Building (LAB). She is currently an Arts Administrator at RAIR, and recently presented her first solo show of paintings at Gross McCleaf Gallery (Philadelphia). Capanna will attend Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 2017.
marieljoancapanna.tumblr.com
@marieljoan
Willie Wayne Smith (b. 1984 Limbe, Haiti) has a diverse practice typified by contextual expressionism rooted in the intersection between personal experience and expectations of meaning. He has had solo exhibitions at Sadie Halie Projects (Brooklyn), Good Weather (North Little Rock, Arkansas), and Cereal Art (Philadelphia). His work has been included in group shows in New York City, Baltimore, Westchester, and Richmond. Willie earned his MFA in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2010 and his BFA in painting from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2006. He was a 2015 nominee for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant in New York. He currently lives and works in Pontiac, Michigan in the Detroit Metro Area.
williewaynesmith.com
@williewaynesmith
