Into the Ether @ Nearby Gallery
Into the Ether
Monica DeSalvo, Tatiana Flis, Rob Trumbour
June 11–July 13, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 11, 6–9 pm
Artist Talk and Social: Friday, July 8, 3:30–5:30 pm
FOR PRESS-READY IMAGES CONTACT: Nearbygallery101@gmail.com / (617) 467-4509
NEWTON, MA — Beginning June 11, 2022, Nearby Gallery will exhibit the work of Monica DeSalvo, Tatiana Flis, and Rob Trumbour in an exhibition titled “Into the Ether.” This three person exhibition was the winning submission from Nearby Gallery’s first call for curated exhibition proposals. Nearby Gallery is an artist-owned showroom and community art space operating in the heart of Newton Centre, MA. Nearby Gallery aims to create opportunities for emerging and mid-career artists and make contemporary art and art education accessible to Newton and surrounding communities.
In loss, in absence, in fragility, we attach ourselves to what happens when physical forms diminish. Through a process of deconstructing, reconstructing, and layering, artists Monica DeSalvo, Tatiana Flis, and Rob Trumbour share their perspectives on permanence, fragility, vulnerability, and acceptance. Each artist takes their personal reflections and shares unique stories about the worlds we create in these moments. The imagery ranges across surrealistic landscapes, cast objects, and abstracted printed views of home and place to create a dynamic visual experience. The conversations between the work explore moments of resilience and humility, giving the viewer a glimpse at that ineffable space of wonder and mystery.
Monica DeSalvo’s work explores her late father's dementia by preserving his vivid recollections, hallucinations, and quotes. DeSalvo draws the viewer into her abstracted compositions blended with contour drawings and printmaking while using collage to combine representational and abstract imagery. Through her process, she arrives at images that are both camouflaged and distinguished in surface and depth. Imagery is interwoven with quiet storytelling, and her use of text is interspersed like sprinkles of thought. For DeSalvo, using her father’s memorabilia as collage elements or as found paper is like performing a duet. This theme allows her to continue investigating their experiences. Dementia let DeSalvo uncover an extraordinarily resilient spirit in her father. Through her work, she aims to expose the value and content— whether joyful or haunting—of one’s inner life toward the end of life.
Monica DeSalvo is a mixed-media artist and graphic designer living in Arlington, Massachusetts. She received her BFA from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. She is an Associate Artist at Fountain Street Gallery in SoWa Boston, a member of the Attleboro Arts Museum, and of the Arlington Center for the Arts. DeSalvo was one of eight artists selected from over 60 applicants to be featured in the Attleboro Arts Museum’s annual juried exhibition "8 Visions" during August 2021.
Tatiana Flis creates objects, paintings, and prints that recall the sacred and ethereal moments of discovery that often dissipate in the face of pragmatism. In offering the viewer a familiar landscape, she allows access to abstracted worlds, creating connections across boundaries of time and space. The experience is an intriguing game between real and illusory, questioning our social constructs. Flis’ forms and imagery act as portals into other dimensions, exploring relationships between the human psyche and moments of chaos, solitude, tension, excess and absence.
Flis earned an MFA in Sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI, and her BFA in Sculpture and Printmaking from Ringling College of Art and Design, FL. She has been featured in Artscope Magazine, Art New England, Juniper Rag, and reviewed in The Boston Globe. Flis has participated in multiple art fairs in Boston and Chicago and was awarded creative residencies at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, and Drop, Forge & Tool in Hudson, NY. Her work has been shown extensively throughout the United States and is collected internationally. She works from her studio in Millbury, MA.
So much has been lost. Trust, truth, purpose, and the things we love are gone. Some of it will be temporary while, sadly, some of it will be permanent and continue to disappear. Although Rob Trumbour’s work has often involved loss in some form, his sensitivity to the collective loss over the past year has been hyperextended and its weight acute. Trumbour has begun to examine these feelings in a new body of work with the ideas of permanence, fragility, vulnerability, and acceptance becoming increasingly present. The work feels the pull of wanting to hang on while simultaneously needing to let go. Trumbour’s work examines the contradictions that loss incites.
Trumbour earned an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, a MA in Architecture from University of Texas at Austin, and a BFA from University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Trumbour is the founding Director of Artforming and Artforming SummerBuild, a Boston-based collective of artists, educators, and design professionals, and is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology. He has been awarded creative residencies at Baer Art Center, Höfdaströnd, Iceland, ChaNorth Artist Residency, Pine Plains, NY, Autodesk Build Space, Boston, MA, and most recently received a fellowship at the Studios at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA.
Image Information
Left: DeSalvo, “This is a leaky place”, Collage on original digital photographs on archival paper, 24 x 36 inches
Middle: Flis, “Radio Silence”, Acrylic monoprints on panel, 48 x 36 inches
Right: Trumbour, “Block 4 Right—All Six Sides”, Carbon print from burnt casts on cotton paper, 30 x 22 inches
Contact Nearby Gallery
Sam Belisle, Gallery Coordinator/Owner
Cal Rice, Gallery Coordinator/Owner
Sally Lee, Community Programming Director
Nearbygallery101@gmail.com
(617) 467-4509
101 Union Street, Newton, MA 02459