Claire Kennedy, Niva Parajuli, and Megan Reed

Feb. 18 - March 25, 2023

Opening reception: Saturday, February 18 from 4:00-7:00pm.

Contact Us for a full artwork list of the exhibition

Galleri Urbane is pleased to announce Stack and Smoosh, a group exhibition of works by Dallas-based artist Claire Kennedy, Austin-based Niva Parajuli, and Los Angeles-based Megan Reed. The exhibition is curated by artist Benjamin Terry and follows his four solo exhibitions at the gallery.

From Curator Benjamin Terry:

As an artist, I'm someone who wants to deconstruct how other artists make the things they make. In a brushstroke I can see how clever, funny, direct, confident, obsessive, clumsy, absurd, or skilled someone is. In this way the work becomes anthropomorphized and the artists reveal their identities and values in each thing they make, what they make it with, and how they contextualize it. As a curator, I'm interested in gathering artists for a show as I gather with friends for a meal. Conversations are rich because each person is contributing their unique perspective and personality. One friend may be playful while one is quiet and thoughtful, and yet another is snarky and quick-witted. In the exchange, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. In Stack and Smoosh, each artist has a rather fluid relationship with painting and sculpture. As such, even when they make objects with traditional painting materials, they are constructing and deconstructing their surfaces, poking at the boundaries between categorization. They forefront the 3- dimensional space of the work, calling attention to the objectness, rather than regulating attention exclusively to 2-dimensional, pictorial concerns. Each artist regularly re-visits the process of stacking and smooshing materials together, assembling surfaces with varied topographies. Claire Kennedy uses a variety of traditional and non-traditional materials to build textured surfaces, including, oil and acrylic, egg cartons, pipe cleaners, and glitter. She often uses familiar shapes and patterns as means to create visual structure within the frenetic energy of her materials. Starbursts, polka dots, checkerboard, and crescents are stacked and bounce from canvas to panel, to slab, to paper, to wall, and floor. The materials and symbols often feel childlike and haphazard, but the combinations are compelling and complicated. Niva Parajuli smooshes together bits of colorful plasticine, creating compositions of kaleidoscopic, pixelated, flowery landscapes. He then stacks them on painted plywood that implies lawns and garden beds or sunset skies. They feel methodical, geometric, and gridded, all while being organic and playful. Surfaces fluctuate from seemingly flat geometric arrangements to layers of implied spaces. They function as meditations on bits of fauna that speckle the concrete city — to which he recently relocated. Megan Reed creates absurdist relics employing a process of drawing and collage. Her works fit more neatly into the realm of sculpture, although they often have an intimate relationship with the wall. They refer to stone circles, the colors of urban architecture, Cyclopean rock formations, cairns and the vernacular of ancient and modern monuments. Reed’s background in theater, moreover, renders her works as characters of sorts who invite the viewer to participate in their performative presence.

Claire Kennedy is a Fort Worth based artist from Cincinnati, Ohio. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati in 2018 and her Masterof Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting from the University of North Texas in 2022. Claire displayed a solo exhibition at Arts Fort Worth in 2022 and has shown work with 500X Gallery, Art Room, Clamp Light Gallery, and the Greater Denton Arts Council. Clairehas been published in New American Paintings and VoyageDallas. She participated in a community-based artist residency with Nectar in Les Guilleries, Spain in August 2022. Claire currently teaches studio art and art history courses at UNT, TWU, and TCC.

Niva Parajuli was born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal. He graduated with a BFA in Studio Art (Painting), from University of Texas at Arlington in May 2020 and with an MFA in Studio Art from Southern Methodist University in May 2022. His work lingers at the intersection of drawing, painting, sculpture and installation. Most recently he has had a public sculpture installed in Dallas, TX in collaboration with Sweet Pass Sculpture Park and A Solo Exhibition at Fort Worth Community Arts Center. His work has been exhibited in several group and juried shows in the greater DFW area, including Gallery West at The University of Texas at Arlington; 500X in Dallas, TX; Frost Tower Fort Worth, TX; and Fort Works Art, Fort Worth, TX. He has collaborated with various artists in Dallas, TX and Fargo, ND to work on public art murals.

Megan Reed earned her MFA in Painting from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA, where she was the recipient of the Graduate Painting Teaching Fellowship and the Rex Ray Material Support Award. She also holds an MA from Southern Illinois University and a BFA from New York University. She has taught at California College of the Arts, Diablo Valley College and Southern Illinois University. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at MASS MoCA, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center and at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, where she created an installation as part of the campus's permanent art collection. Her work has appeared twice in New American Paintings, in Vogue Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She has been included in group shows at Harper's Los Angeles, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Berkeley Art Center, MASS Moca, and Johansson Projects, among others. Her most recent solo showwas held at Halsey McKay Gallery, in East Hampton, NY.