December 5, 2020 — January 2, 2021
Speaking in Tongues
Maja Ruznic, Anthony Sonnenberg, Vincent Falsetta, C. Meng
Conduit Gallery is honored to announce Speaking in Tongues, a group exhibition of works by Vincent Falsetta, C. Meng, Maja Ruznic and Anthony Sonnenberg.
Speaking in tongues, also known as glossolalia, refers to the phenomenon of speaking a language indecipherable to all but the speaker. The practice spans continents and millennia and has origins in Greco Roman and Christian religious traditions. It is therefore often considered divine in its origin; the speaker Pulling up the Roots of meaning through ecstatic action. Speaking in Tongues is also the name of the 1983 art rock masterpiece by The Talking Heads whose track listing activates this text.
The four artists in the exhibition, each with their own idiosyncratic approach to image making, Swamp their works with ideas and intent through their own visual language.
Vincent Falsetta’s large oil on canvas painting, Untitled 80-7 (1980) will be on view for the first time at Conduit Gallery. Precisely painted shapes rhythmically balance in a Wild Geometry and float above a stippled ground, Making Flippy Floppy into a steady choreography.
A collection of small new canvas works by Chinese painter C. Meng illustrate the artist’s deft balance of his Eastern and Western artistic lineage. In the small mysterious canvas, Before Dawn (2020), a cadre of faces on a black ground evoke late night Slippery People rambling and discussing which Girlfriend is Better, their unanimous chatter Burning Down the House.
Based in Roswell, New Mexico, Bosnian born Maja Ruznic conjures ancestral wisdom in her paintings and drawings. In the new large-scale ink on paper drawing, Dream Catchers (2020), a monochromatic Moon Rocks landscape is populated with figures both implied and well defined, each body fluidly coming into and out of focus through time and memory.
Arkansas based multidisciplinary artist Anthony Sonnenberg has become well known for his elaborate porcelain sculptures that blend high art Baroque and Rococo maximalism with twentieth century thrift store kitsch. Each semi-functional vase and candelabra drips with flora and fauna and asserts, “This Must Be the Place” the viewer’s eye shall land.
Vincent Falsetta is a Texas based artist who was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. He earned an MFA in Painting/Drawing from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia and Rome, Italy in 1974 where he studied with artists Stephen Greene, David Pease, John Dowell and Richard Crammer. In 1972, he earned a BA in Art from Temple University and worked with John Wade, Dennis Adams, Neil Kosh and Don Lantzy. After teaching at Indiana University, 1974-1975 and the University of Utah, 1975-1977 he moved to Denton, to teach at the University of North Texas, 1977-2017. He is now Professor Emeritus and lives and works in Denton as a full-time artist.
Born in Shanghai, C. Meng came to the U.S. to pursue his M.F.A. at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio in the 1980’s. For over three decades, he has employed his superb draftsmanship and facile hand to convey with simple lines, notations and scenes from his daily life and travels. From his native China to Parisian cafes and the wooded areas of New England, Meng’s elegant genre paintings have shown a by-standers glimpse into everyday life. Meng held the position of Senior Lecturer at Wellesley College in Massachusetts from 1997 until 2015.
Maja Ruznic, a prolific and active artist, is a storyteller who conjures form and narrative from ground up mineral, smeared oil, and stained canvas. Born in Bosnia and Hercegovina in 1983, Ruznic immigrated to the United States with her family in 1995, settling on the West Coast where she went on to study at the University of California, Berkeley, later earning an MFA from the California College of Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include: Conduit Gallery, Dallas (2020); Hales Gallery, London, UK (2020); Duplex100m2, Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Hercegovina (2017); and Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco (2016). In the spring of 2021, Maja Ruznic’s solo show, In the Sliver of the Sun, will open at the Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM. Maja Ruznic lives and works in Roswell, New Mexico.
Anthony Sonnenberg’s luscious ceramic sculptures set a stage calling the spectator to ekstasis (to be or to stand outside one’s self.) The elaborate hand-built ceramic sculptures echo the decadent elaborations of Baroque and Rococo fioriture. Initially reminiscent of past civilizations’ aesthetic efflorescence, upon closer inspection, the viewer can vaguely identify familiar modern tchotchkes built into the structure. Born in 1986 in Graham, TX, Anthony Sonnenberg earned a BA with an emphasis in Italian and Art History in 2009 and an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Washington, Seattle in 2012. Recent exhibitions include: State of the Arts 2020 – Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Te Auaha, Wellington, New Zealand; Art Museum of South East Texas, Beaumont, TX (solo, 2018); Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Houston, TX (2019); Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA (2019); Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2019) and Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA (2018).