By Mark Jenkins
Feb. 28, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. EST
When they began the process that led to Stable, local artists Tim Doud, Linn Meyers and Caitlin Teal Price were primarily looking for studio space. But what resulted is quite a bit more than that and includes a large gallery. Its first show introduces both the newly repurposed building and its residents: “Dialogues” presents work by 30 artists who have studios at Stable, whether for the long term or on a temporary basis.
Doud is best known for portraits but here is showing pattern paintings collaged with photographic details. Meyers’s and Price’s styles emphasize tight detail — Meyers often drawing undulating motifs with ink and Price incising abstract photographs with an X-ACTO knife. Among the other intricate pieces are Stephen Benedicto’s pencil-drawn black-on-black labyrinth and Ying Zhu’s wry homage to the Roman alphabet, in which A’s swarm like ants.
Two large pieces dominate the opposite ends of the space. Near the entrance is Emily Francisco’s “Trans-Harmonium,” a partly dissected piano whose keys summon not notes but the broadcast sounds of about 40 battered clock radios. It faces Nekisha Durrett’s towering “Go-Go Belongs Here,” which delivers that message atop the largely obscured text of vintage go-go posters. The funk also cranks in a painting by Matthew Mann, who contrasts a leafy landscape with two concert fliers from the 1980s moment when go-go and hardcore punk briefly intersected.
As in many group shows, the conversation between the individual artworks seems to owe as much to happenstance as to design. But that’s just one possible meaning of “Dialogues.” The title also refers to potential exchanges among the building’s inhabitants and with visitors. Stable is designed not just as a place to work but also a place to talk.