The Galleries at Crosstown Arts
Friday, April 21, 2023
Times: 6-8 pm
Tickets: Free and open to the public

Crosstown Arts announces its spring 2023 arts programming — “Deceive the Heavens to Cross the Seas” by McLean Fahnestock, “Edgewise: Exploring Pattern and Rhythm with Line” by Khara Woods, “Entrances, Exits and the Spaces Betwixt” by Tangela Mathis, and “Color Thread” by Carl Fox.

The opening reception is scheduled for Friday, April 21, 6-8 p.m. The exhibitions run from Saturday, April 22, through Sunday, August 6.

Screening Room:
McLean Fahnestock — “Deceive the Heavens to Cross the Seas”

This exhibition is composed of videos from McLean Fahnestock’s Stratagem series, where the sea and sky flip and merge to generate a new, seductive yet false horizon. Stratagems are plans or schemes that are designed to deceive. Usually referring to warfare, they are a well-executed artifice upon an enemy. Working with her interest in desire as it manifests in the landscape, these works present the ways that our desires can open a door to our ultimate deception.

In a presentation unique to Crosstown Arts, the videos have been loaded into a custom program that randomly chooses the video and the length of time the video will loop before the next one is randomly chosen to play. Viewers will have a shifting experience that will never repeat.

The title for the exhibition comes from the first of the 36 Stratagems – a 6th century Chinese text covering political, military, and social strategy written by an unknown scholar.

McLean Fahnestock works with the dynamically changing landscape. Her practice is centered on our desire for specific visual and physical landscapes as manifested through the concept of paradise. This has led to investigations into how this desire has been the catalyst for climate change, colonialism, and ecocide. She utilizes digital forms of collage, video, and new media. McLean received a BFA from Middle Tennessee State University and MFA from California State University Long Beach. Her work has been exhibited and screened across the United States and internationally. Her work was selected for Off the Screen at the 57th Ann Arbor Film Festival. She has been an artist in residence at Stove Works in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and The Lock-Up in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. McLean keeps her studio in Old Hickory, Tennessee.

East Gallery:

Khara Woods — “Edgewise: Exploring Pattern and Rhythm with Line”

“Edgewise: Exploring Pattern and Rhythm with Line” presents a collection of paintings, sculpture and creative devices developed since 2016. The works examine the creation of movement and texture focusing on a restricted set of grids, bold colors and shapes inspired by basic geometry. Within these confines, there are arrangements that intertwine, shift and vibrate across canvas and wood.

Khara Woods was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. She comes from a family of artists and craftspeople. She continues the tradition with her geometric abstract paintings and sculpture. Woods began working as a public artist in 2015, creating and installing murals. In 2016, she began her studio practice. Woods works primarily with wood, using it as a canvas or to make 3D art. Mural Arts Philadelphia commissioned Woods as a lead artist for its Art & Environment Initiative in 2019. She completed her first large-scale data visualization mural, “Basin Portraits,” in October of that year. She created paintings and mini sculptural studies for her first solo exhibition in October 2020 at the Beverly and Sam Ross Gallery at Christian Brothers University. Some of Woods’ latest op-art-inspired paintings and a layered wood sculpture were displayed in the Axis exhibition at Hilliard Art Museum in Lafayette, Louisiana in 2021. Since then, Woods is continuing to develop her studio practice and making more 3D works. and State Fellowship Program, and was the finalist for the Southern Prize.

West Gallery:

Tangela Mathis — “Entrances, Exits and the Spaces Betwixt”

“Entrances, Exits and the Spaces Betwixt” presents contrasting aspects of personality, showcasing the yin and yang of pneuma. The exhibit represents a mental, emotional, and spiritual transformation within a palpable dreamscape. Works presented depict and embrace ideas of transitory spaces visually, mentally and physically.

“Entrances, Exits and the Spaces Betwixt” offers the public a glimpse into the unfiltered psyche of TANGELA. The exhibit presents contrasting aspects of her personality, showcasing the yin and yang of her pneuma. TANGELA is undergoing a mental, emotional, and spiritual transformation, and invites visitors to witness her journey as she ebbs and flows.

Art Bar Bar Top:
Carl Fox — “Color Thread”

“Color Thread” by Carl Fox is a mixed-media installation featuring works in acrylic, oil, and watercolor paired with text. The installation invites the viewer to move along a tapestry of color and hold space for Carl’s thoughts on the nature of color and how an examination of that nature can be brought to other aspects of life. Do colors have identity? Can one re-create an experience of color? How do the richest colors — browns, coppers, maroons — seem to slide under us, unnoticed, as we move through everyday life?