January 11, 2012

Marty Weishaar's Playful Art Is an Urban Jungle Gym

Press Release PDF: http://www.spacesgallery.org/files/pr/2012/120111-spaces-weishaar-pr.pdf
Press Packet (PDF + images): http://www.spacesgallery.org/files/pr/2012/120111-spaces-weishaar-press-packet.zip

Exhibition: February 3, 2012 - March 30, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, February 3, 7:00 - 9:30 p.m.

Cleveland, OH, January 11, 2012-SPACES invites the Baltimore-based artist Marty Weishaar to execute his playfully chaotic style of art making in Cleveland. SPACES will be filled with bridges, toy car tracks, and cardboard airplanes to create a microcosm that is reminiscent of crumbling infrastructures, and the messy craft of modern civilization-building.

Weishaar's seemingly disorganized objects are thoughtfully constructed of common materials such as packing tape, zip ties, cardboard, matchbox cars and spray foam. At first glance, these forms (that rarely include a right angle) seem to be both toppling and rising at the same time. His work forms symbolic relationships between traditional and nontraditional materials with various historical approaches, such as conceptualism and intuituve abstraction. Connections are made between two-dimensional and three-dimensional projects, systematic abstract paintings, diarist drawings, airplanes, bridges and buildings.

ARTIST BIOS

Lives and works in Baltimore, MD.
Marty Weishaar graduated from American University in 2007 with a Master of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting. In July of 2010, Marty was a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center. There he met Serena Perone the two of them completed an exhibit titled Exit Strategies at the Creative Alliance. Last year he had two solo exhibitions, at the Amile Rothschild Gallery and The Chesapeake Gallery at Harford Community College. In addition, Weishaar exhibited two mechanical matchbook car tracks at ArtScape and Axis Alley in 2011. Participants were allowed to play with the sculpture by moving mechanical cranks to pull toy cars along the tracks. Most recently Weishaar exhibted at Goucher College in a show titled See I MADe IT, which included fifty-seven drawings and four kinetic matchbox-car tracks. Marty is currently an artist-in-residence at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, Maryland.