Horse Show
January 8 - February 12, 2022
Curated by Meghan Borah & Jeane Cohen
Chase Barney, Meghan Borah, Jeane Cohen, Michel Droge, Benji Grignon, Emilie Stark-Menneg, Celeste Morton, Scott Schultheis
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Horses, horses, horses, horses
Coming in in all directions
White shining, silver studs with their nose in flames,
He saw horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses.
For those of us familiar with Patti Smith’s Horses/Land, off of her 1975 album Horses, we know that we are on the threshold of what will soon become a song difficult to enjoy. A boy named Johnny is raped, becomes addicted to cocaine, and dies of suicide. The herd of horses, “white shining silver studs with their nose in flames” insinuates Johnny’s mental and emotional breakdown.
Like Smith’s song, subject matter driving the works in Horse Show are painful to digest, yet the buoyant compositions and imagery are inspiring. For the seven artists in this show, the horse emerges as a playful, yet compelling, and complicated muse.
The horse image has a long history in the artistic tradition of depiction: from the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux, the drama of Pierro della Francesca’s epic The Legend of the True Cross war painting, Eadweard Muybridge’s revolutionary stop-motion film The Horse in Motion, to Susan Rothenberg’s iconic equine paintings. The horse, and the culture encompassing the creature, are used to communicate themes of spirituality, nobility, fantasy, eroticism, and identity. The horse as a subject weighs heavily in painted images. Its steadfast presence and varied manifestations ultimately reflect deeper values within the human experience.
Paintings in the exhibition depict horses appearing through fog, silhouetted against landscapes, and submerged by surrounding swells of grass, rainbows, and sea. The works in this show highlight a particularly symbolic and fantastical relationship to horses, and serve as testimonies of the artists’ inquiries into selfhood.
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Exhibition text by Meghan Borah and Jeane Cohen, edited by John Borah
Exhibition Install Images:
Artist Bios
Chase Barney graduated with a BFA from the University of Minnesota in 2019 and will complete his MFA at The School of the Art Institute Chicago in May 2022. Barney has exhibited across the United States and received numerous grants and scholarships in support of his work, including a 2020 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant and the New Artist Full Merit Scholarship from SAIC. Barney is originally from Utah, where he learned to always look on the bright side. Living in the Midwest for the last 9 years, he has been taught to wear long underwear and never take a winter walk with his hands in his pockets. Barney currently lives and works in Chicago, IL, with his husband and two dogs.
Meghan Borah lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her work has been featured in Chicago Magazine, Time Out Chicago, New American Paintings and ArtSlant. Borah earned her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, and was a resident at The Vermont Studio Center in October 2018. Borah is represented by Galleri Urbane (Dallas) and Goldfinch Gallery (Chicago).
Jeane Cohen is an artist based in Brunswick, Maine. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018 and her BA from Hampshire College in 2011. She has had solo exhibitions at Slag Gallery in New York City, Miami University in Ohio, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery in Chicago, and Flying Object in Massachusetts. She has participated in group exhibitions at The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Julius Caesar Gallery, Vox Populi, Able Baker Contemporary, Brooklyn Fire Proof and numerous other spaces. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, a Yeck Young Painters Competition Award, and has held residencies at Ox-Bow School of Art & Artist’s Residency, Monson Arts, the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, and the 40th Street Artist-in-Residence Program. Cohen has completed over twenty public works projects and works in an ongoing capacity as a counselor, educator, therapeutic teaching artist, and community artist. She is currently faculty at Maine College of Art and Design.
Michel Droge is a painter and printmaker whose work engages with the environment and the human condition in an era of uncertainty. Inspired by the landscape, mapping and environmental research, their large scale abstract paintings unravel existing grids and structures and make way for new ones that are emerging. In an effort to de-master the landscape they model a queer matrix in conversation with nineteenth century landscape schools and naturalists. Michel is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation award, a co-recipient of a Kindling Fund grant and three Maine Arts Commission grants. They have been awarded fellowships and residencies at Surfpoint, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Hewnoaks Residency, The Tides Institute, The Joseph Fiore Foundation, The Stephen Pace House and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Their work has been included in national and international exhibitions amongst which include The Cue Art Foundation, Bates College Art Museum, University of Maine, Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA, Maine Jewish Museum, Boston University and Brandeis University.
Benji Grignon was born in 1999 in Saratoga Springs, New York. He attended Maine College of Art in pursuit of his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in, and currently lives and works in Portland, Maine. Benji is a lifelong horseman, and holds infinite love and reverence for horses.
Emilie Stark-Menneg is a painter with a background in video, sculpture, and performance. She received her MFA in painting from RISD in 2019 and her BFA in combined media from Cornell University in 2007. She’s had solo exhibits at Morgan Lehman Gallery, NYC, Steven Harvey Fine Arts Projects, NYC, Field Projects Gallery, NYC, Allouche Gallery, NYC, Makebish Gallery, NYC, Kijidome Gallery, Boston, MA, Elizabeth Moss Gallery, Falmouth, ME, and the Leonard R. Craig Gallery, Unity College, Unity, ME. Her installation, “Sing Me to Another Sound” was included in the 2015 Portland Museum of Art Biennial. Stark-Menneg has collaborated with the American poet Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon on several performance, including the Cornell Council for the Arts Biennial and the DeCordova Museum’s 2019 Biennial. She was recently awarded a Surf Point Foundation Residency for 2023 in York, ME. Her work is featured in an upcoming virtual viewing room with De Buck Gallery in anticipation of her solo show in Saint Paul de Vence, France, 2022. Stark-Menneg is included in Shrubs a group show at Night Gallery, LA, opening in January 2022.
Celeste Morton lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She is from the Hudson Valley, NY and received her BA in Film Theory from University of Vermont, her post baccalaureate from School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her MFA from University of Delaware in 2018. She has shown her paintings in South Carolina, Delaware, Texas, Brooklyn and NYC. In 2020 she participated in Azule Residency in North Carolina.
Scott Schultheis is a Philadelphia based artist and teacher. His studio practice consists of mixed media paintings and video work. He teaches K-8 art in the school district of Philadelphia.