Hair/Weed Synthesis (2014) by Tasha Depp
It’s Tasha Depp’s time up in Catskill. The deeply thoughtful and ethically driven artist, whose paintings of and on trash have been showing up in galleries around the Hudson Valley with increasing regularity over the past few years, has not only co-curated the new group show at the Greene County Council for the Arts – opening this weekend for a two-month run in Catskill – but will also be having her first solo show of beautifully composed and executed works whose themes, materials and very presence are bound to haunt not only the way one sees arts ever after, but the very fabric of life and our oft-destructive presence within it.
“Ad Infinitum,” the group show, has been shaped as a site-specific installation that presupposes a collaborative process among the invited artists, who include Jordan Baker, Matt Bua, Dana Gentile, Jared Handelsman, Sam Horowitz, Sono Kuwayama, Paula Lalala, Anne-Marie McIntyre, Sara Pruiksma and Draga Susanj. All were asked to make “a conceptual, mazelike web of sculptures, photograms and collages to walk through” as a “convergence of earth and sky, cardboard and glass.”
Depp’s exhibit, “Connected Vision,” mixes portrait-like depictions of trash in nature, works on trash and other means of drawing our relationship with art, and culture’s drive towards immortality, into question. Yet at the same time, it uses classic elements of beauty and painted verisimilitude to engage less weighty, more naturalistic observations of lives lived.
“Ad Infinitum” and “Connected Vision” go up at the Greene County Council for the Arts Gallery at 398 Main Street in Catskill from July 5 through September 1, with an opening reception in tandem with the village’s Second Saturday stroll from 5 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, July 12. For more information call (518) 943-3400 or visit www.greenearts.org.