“Liminality” at The Border Gallery

Participating artists: John Drue Scott Worrell, Frank Wang Yefeng, and Jamie Martinez

Sept 7 – Oct 21, 2018

The Border is pleased to announce the opening of the group exhibition Liminality on Friday, September 7. Featuring works by John Drue Scott Worrell, Frank Wang Yefeng, and Jamie Martinez, Liminality explores themes of ritualistic surreality through mixed media works.

An anthropological term, liminality refers to a sort of ritualistic limbo: the phase between one’s pre-ritualistic self and a final reformed being. During this liminal period, the individual loses all identifying or personal features, remaining as anonymous as conceivably possible. It is a disorienting phase of rebirth – the participant stands on the threshold between old and new, belonging to neither. The term holds a mysterious quality and yet seems familiar – the unease, or growing pains, during periods of personal, or even large-scale political or social change, often can seem to border on this same sense of unknowing.

The exhibition Liminality focuses on the surrealness of this idea of ritualistic transition, constructing an environment apropos of a cult induction unhindered by the constraints of time and place.  Visitors will enter a sort of purgatory – being neither here nor there, to encounter mixed media works that may be more than what they seem, participants themselves in mysterious rites of passage. What happens within the liminal space remains to be seen, allowing for discoveries throughout the exhibition.

At the end of the exhibition, we will recycle the used organic & natural potting mix that we used on the floor and offer a limited amount to our guests along with Snake plants, which cleans the air, are easy to maintain, and it’s native to West Africa from Nigeria east to the Congo. The idea is to recycle the show and to keep the show/energy alive after it closes by giving it a new life through the Snake plants.

John Drue Scott Worrell received his MFA from the Yale School of Art, sculpture department and his BFA in Painting & Art History from the Herron School of Art and Design, Indiana University. He has shown at Oilwik Gallery (Indianapolis, IN), Gait Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Roach Factory gallery (Los Angeles, CA) and Machine Project (Los Angeles, CA) to name a few. He was also a fabricator for Paul McCarthy and and assistant to Wayne White. John Drue Scott Worrell is the recipient of the Fannie B. Pardee Sculpture Prize from The Yale School of Art.

Frank Wang Yefeng is an interdisciplinary artist. He was born in 1984, in Shanghai, China. He left China for the United States after completing his BFA at Shanghai University, and received his MFA in Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. In 2013 he began teaching and building the Digital Media Art program at Rhode Island College as an Associate Professor. Yefeng is currently based in Providence, RI and New York, and constantly travels back and forth between the United States and his hometown, Shanghai.

Yefeng actively pursues his artistic career in both East and West, and continues to think and work critically across media including Experimental 3D rendering and animation, video installation, virtual reality, and 3D printing. Yefeng has extensive experience exhibiting in venues internationally, which include Co-prosperity Sphere Culture Center(Chicago, IL), El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe(NM), Herald Square(NY, NY), Xuzhou Museum of Art(Xuzhou, China), HEREarts Center(NY, NY), The Museum of Luxun Academy of Art(Shenyang, China), Gene Siskel Film Center(Chicago, IL), Hyde Park Art Center(Hyde Park, IL), Hong Kong Art projects Gallery(Hong Kong), Between Art Lab(Shanghai, China), Governors Island Art Fair (NY,NY), Chi K11 Art Museum (Shanghai, China), etc. He was also a residency artist and juried panel member in NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, NY.

Jamie Martinez Colombian / American artist that immigrated to Florida at the age of twelve from South America. He attended The Miami International University of Art and Design then moved to New York to continue his fine art education at The Fashion Institute of Technology and The Students Art League in NYC. Jamie’s work has been featured in multiple outlets like a TV interview with NTN24 (Nuestra Tele Noticias, a major Spanish TV channel) Good Day New York (TV interview),  Fox news (TV interview), The Observer, Whitewall Magazine, CNN, New York Magazine, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, and many more. Martinez has shown in numerous galleries in New York City including Petzel Gallery, Whitebox NY, The Gabarron Foundation, Flowers Gallery, Elga Wimmer PCC, Foley Gallery, Galerie Protégé and many more. He also participated in a group show curated by Vida Sabbaghi at the Queens Museum which was very well received by the museum and the press.