NJCU Presents At the still point, there the dance is, a Solo Exhibition of Mia Brownell

JERSEY CITY, N.J., March 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery of New Jersey City University is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Mia Brownell, At the still point, there the dance is., curated by Midori Yoshimoto, Gallery Director, from March 18 to April 23, 2015. The exhibition will feature twelve oil paintings, spanning 2006-2014, with an emphasis on recent works.

The title of the exhibition is inspired from the poem Four Quartets by poet, T.S. Elliot. In the first quartet, "Burnt Norton" (1935), Elliot wrote:

"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is. But neither arrest nor movement."

This prose has been one of the artist's inspirations for painting a never-ending "dance" of fruits, vines, and chemical molecules which swirl and interlock in complex motion. While these paintings carry on certain conventions from seventeenth-century Dutch still life, Brownell's work is never "still" due to the compositional movement contained within.

The curiously twisting formations of her still life, in fact, stems from the molecular dynamics of proteins, as seen in Still Life with Villin Headpiece. Pieces of meat incorporated in some of her paintings unexpectedly remind us of the transient nature of life. In a recent public lecture, the artist recently remarked, "I embrace the invisible by reflecting on the social and cultural aspects of the food that we eat…. I use still life as a means to expressive end, rather than as the end in itself."

Darra Goldstein, the Williams College professor and editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture commented: "Meditating on shapes seen and unseen, Brownell gives expressive form to the molecules comprising the foods that we eat, and in so doing straddles the boundaries between food and science, between naturalism and abstraction." Brownell's luscious paintings also subtly alert us to the potential harms of biotechnology, such as the genetic engineering of foods.

Mia Brownell was born in Chicago, Illinois to a sculptor and biophysicist. She holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and an MFA from University of Buffalo. For last two decades, she has held numerous solo and group exhibitions across the United States and her work has been reviewed in numerous renowned publications, including the Boston Globe, The Village Voice, and the New York Times. She is a professor of painting at Southern Connecticut State University.

The Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery
(Hepburn Hall room 323)
New Jersey City University
2039 Kennedy Blvd.
Jersey City, NJ 07305

Mia Brownell: At the still point, there the dance is.
March 18 – April 23
Opening Reception: March 18, 5 – 8 p.m.
Artist Talk: March 18, 5:30-6:30 p.m. in Hepburn Hall room 202

For further information, please contact Midori Yoshimoto, Gallery Director ([email protected] or 201-200-2197.)

SOURCE New Jersey City University (NJCU)