Alison O’Daniel: Heavy Air and Lui Shtini: Tempos

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts presents two new solo exhibitions illustrating the allusive and enigmatic nature of sound and form, Alison O’Daniel: Heavy Air and Lui Shtini: Tempos, on view through June 15, 2019.

Alison O’Daniel: Heavy Air
Alison O’Daniel’s artistic practice spans the mediums of film, sculpture, performance, and installation. Structuring her work as a call-and-response, she utilizes these mediums to visualize and investigate the range of people’s access to sound. Simultaneously, O’Daniel creates work for both a hearing and a Deaf audience, building a visual, aural, and haptic vocabulary as a means of storytelling.

Heavy Air places itself at the center of these explorations, highlighting the ambient sounds that literally hang in the air. What does it mean to not have full ability to hear and at the same time transfer this experience to a hearing audience? How can one translate sounds into a physical or spoken language? How do we read, speak, or hear this language? The annunciation and non-annunciation of sound through various forms allows for a multitude of experiences, and in the gallery at Bemis, these experiences are examined through the lens of contemporary art.

Alison O’Daniel (b. 1979, Miami, FL) works in Los Angeles, CA. She received her BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art in 2003 and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine in 2010. She has exhibited, screened and performed at the Ford Theater with FLAX French Los Angeles Exchange (2018); Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2017); Art in General, New York, NY (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2016); and The Drawing Center, New York, NY (2016). She has received several awards and honors, including a Creative Capitol Fellowship (2019) and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant (2014).

Lui Shtini: Tempos
Lui Shtini: Tempos represents the artist’s first institutional exhibition. Focusing on works created over the past five years—with several new paintings finished in the past few months—this exhibition highlights his intuitive process. Shtini’s work translates abstracted thoughts into two-dimensional forms, birthing the intangible.

In Tempos, Shtini presents 26 works, grouped together by series. The specific gallery architecture and installation is meant to invoke a cadence amongst the different bodies of work, allowing for each area to proclaim their specific tempo. Without exception, each of Shtini’s drawings and paintings are shrouded in a layer of mystery, eliciting hints of the underlying subject matter. His organic forms conjure imagery related to the body, to matter possibly seen under a microscope, to what might be seen deep into the cosmos or inside an atom. They are simultaneously filled with drama as well as the absence of it and are at once haptic and calm, allowing for deeper meditation on form, texture, and the use of space.

Lui Shtini (b. 1978 Kavaje, Albania) lives in Brooklyn, NY. He attended the Academy of Arts in Tirana, Albania from 1997 to 2000. He immigrated to the United States in the early 2000s and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007. Shtini has held solo exhibitions at Lambdalambdalambda, Prishtina, Kosovo (2018); Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, IL (2017, 2014); Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY (2016, 2013); and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles, CA (2015). He was granted a NYFA painting fellowship in 2010 and was the 2014 artist resident at the Sharpe-Walentas studio program in Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY.

Bemis Center Gallery Hours: Wednesday, Friday–Saturday 11am–5pm; Thursday 11am–9pm.

Admission: Free

Alison O’Daniel: Heavy Air and Lui Shtini: Tempos are organized by Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska and curated by Rachel Adams, Bemis Chief Curator and Director of Programs.

Alison O’Daniel: Heavy Air and Lui Shtini: Tempos are sponsored, in part, by Omaha Steaks and Security National Bank. Special thanks to Nebraska Arts Council and Nebraska Cultural Endowment.