Shona Macdonald's UNCANNY VALLEY Exhibition to Open This Today at MASS MoCA

CYNTHIA-REEVES opens Uncanny Valley, a show of innovative works on paper and paintings by New England-based artist, Shona Macdonald. Opening with a reception from 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, February 28 at 1315 MASS MoCA Way, on the art campus of MASS MoCA, the exhibition runs through March 29.

Uncanny Valley is a new series developed from 2013-2015 that explores how human intervention interrupts the landscape. Macdonald deciphers those interruptions in illustrative and figural forms: tarps covering over-wintered plants, reflectors resembling eyes, hay bales becoming teeth. Viewing the landscape for its cultural, rather than organic, geography was first explored by American writer, J. B. Jackson, (1909 - 1996), who also coined the phrase "vernacular landscape". The New York Times has called Jackson "America's greatest...writer on the forces that have shaped the land this nation occupies," (Herbert Muschamp for the New York Times). Macdonald seeks to visually depict the cultural geography that Jackson references and, specifically, the place where she resides, New England.

The artist comments: "Sometimes the places I depict are melancholic and soulless, other times they are droll. Part of how viewers can identify with these places is a sense of having been there before, or seeing something we have seen before. I want to show them back to the viewer: to re-present them as a way to establish a sense of belonging."

Macdonald's newest body of work, Sky on Ground (2014 - 2015), similarly calls our attention to overlooked everyday occurrences. She inserts elements of the landscape that would normally reside outside the picture frame, and places them squarely in the center of the composition using reflection as the vehicle. These interruptions again draw attention to a different way of visually referencing the land.

"Shona Macdonald's paintings and drawings offer an evocative reading of landscape riddled with manifold implications. Her works present imagery characterized by both its precisely rendered detail and confounding spatial ambiguity. Macdonald's imaginative topographies incorporate an intriguing array of pictorial tactics, as she zeroes in on her surroundings, observing and reworking them deftly. Drawing upon the history of abstracted landscape, a complex range of sources become refined into renderings that lay claim to a highly layered and nuanced, sometimes haunting graphic imagery." -- Martin Patrick, "Around: Shona Macdonald", Roswell Art Museum, 2011

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, Shona Macdonald received a Masters in Fine Art at the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1996, and a Bachelors of Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland in 1992. An Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director of Studio Arts at the University of Massachusetts, Macdonald has been a Visiting Artist at over forty institutions, including Wimbledon College of Art, London, (1998), Georgia State University, Atlanta, (2007), Cornell University (2006), the University of Alberta, and the University of Calgary, Canada, (2002). A grant recipient from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, NY , (2009), along with fellowships at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence in Roswell, New Mexico, (2010-11), Can Serrat, Barcelona, Spain, (2012), and the Cromarty Arts Trust in Scotland, her work has been featured in Art in America, Art News, the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, Sacramento Bee and New American Paintings. Select solo exhibitions include Ebersmoore, Chicago, (2012), the Roswell Art Museum, Roswell, NM, (2011), Engine Room, Wellington, New Zealand, (2010), Proof Gallery, Boston, MA (2009), CYNTHIA- REEVES, New York, NY (2008), Den Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA, (2007), Skestos-Gabriele, Chicago IL, (2005), Galerie Refugium, Berlin, Germany, (2002), and Fassbender Gallery, Chicago (1998 and 2000). The artist lives and works in Western Massachusetts.

For further information on Shona Macdonald, visit the online gallery at cynthia-reeves.com or contact us at 212-714-0044. Please note the gallery is open by appointment only, and on select weekends through March.

Pictured: Shona Macdonald, Sky on Ground Large, casein on canvas, 25 x 37 inches, 2014.