BROOKLYN, NY.- Causey Contemporary announced that two paintings by Magnolia Laurie are being acquired by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO for their permanent collection. Paintings, "November Charlie" (I am in distress and require immediate assistance) and "To Abandon My Vessel" (Alfa Bravo) were selected for the museum by curator Barbara O'Brien after visiting Magnolia solo exhibition at Causey Contemporary. The exhibition entitled "All After: All Before" opened on February 12, 2010 and runs through March 13, 2010 at the gallery's 293 Grand St. Location in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. This acquisition will mark the first by a museum of Magnolia's work.
The two paintings headed for the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art each feature the color coded signal flags that ships use to relay messages to one another often when in distress. Thus suggesting that the structures depicted are attempting to communicate the need for assistance in the face of whatever adversity they are positioned within. Magnolia's exhibition title , All After All Before is in fact taken from AA...AB, the Morse code for repeating a message. Often used to highlight or draw attention to a part of the message, it is a signal to request communication from whoever can receive it. Additionally, Magnolia Laurie's paintings represent delicate and makeshift illogical structures and systems that may not endure their own weight, let alone the impending disruptions. They reference the sustained need to try, to build, to create, even in the face of complete futility.
Magnolia Laurie received her BA in Critical Social Thought from Mount Holyoke College, a Post Baccalaureate Degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She was awarded a MICA Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center in 2007 and is currently an Artist Fellow for the Hamiltonian Gallery in DC. Magnolia Laurie lives is Baltimore, MD, as an artist in residence at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson.
