PAST Exhibitions & EVENTS
The Persistent Present: New Work by John Bell
Opening Reception:
Friday, September 12, 2014-6-9PM
Show Runs:
September 12 – October 25, 2014
In The Persistent Present, John Bell creates pictures and objects that hover in and out of identifiable experience. These things become a vehicle for exploring the realm of potential, existing as animal, vegetable and mineral simultaneously. The paintings, drawings and assemblage objects project a dynamic sense of movement and bodily presence, something that cannot be contained.
Bell explains his intentions as, “I think of myself as a figurative artist whose work depicts subjects as verbs rather than nouns. In circumventing the rules and limitations of empirical observation, I can dismiss the named subject — the noun-subject — as a classification with limitations.”
John Bell is a painter from Rockford, Illinois and currently lives and works in St. Paul. He received his BA from Grinnell College in 2008, where he studied history, philosophy, and anthropology alongside studio art. He graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design with an MFA in visual studies in the spring of 2010. Bell has shown his artwork in a variety of venues throughout the country, including the Bell Museum of Natural History, Curious Matter Gallery, The Rockford Art Museum, and Faulconer Gallery. His work was also featured in New American Paintings. This will be Bell’s first solo exhibition in Minnesota.