Goodluckhavefun is pleased to announce the opening of Constellation, a group exhibition of drawings, paintings, and prints created by three artists: Brooke Burnside, Preetal Shah, and Matt Southworth.
Constellations are concepts: a concept like the Big Dipper can help you navigate when you want to sail north. Concepts help us to structure patterns and meaning out of the chaos around us, to filter out some of the noise. The artists in this exhibition recognize the utility of concepts like the constellation, while also knowing when to discard the conceit.
Join us for the opening exhibition on March 10th, from 7–10pm.
Preetal Shah’s most recent work is rooted in stream of consciousness. Each composition begins with a foundational concept, typically a geometric form exploring depth, scale, and space. Subsequent elements are added spontaneously, with deliberate consideration of their relationship to the overall composition. In each piece, Preetal’s architectural training is visible in the use of drafting techniques, along with the interplay of space, form and order. Influenced by Surrealist artists Yves Tanguy, and Joan Miro, as well as Abstract Expressionist painter Al Held, and Constructivist artist Eli Lissitzky, Preetal’s work attempts to connect a line between the abstract and familiar.
Brooke Burnside was born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas. She earned her BA in Film from Vassar College and her MA in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University. She recently graduated from the Masters of Architecture program at the University of Texas at Austin and is now a Designer at a small architecture firm in Austin, TX. Burnside has shown work in Nassau, Bahamas, at various galleries in Austin, TX, as well as at the Spring Break Art show in New York City. She was a recipient of the 2020 Big Medium LINE residency and also participated in the 2020 Willow House residency for Black Artists in Terlingua, TX. Through a variety of media, Burnside's work explores geography, race, memory, and the transgressive potential in abstract documentation.
Matt Southworth's current body of work represents a daily painting process that he has developed over the last year.
"I decided to use digital painting as a kind of incubator for my thoughts when traditional painting felt too cumbersome and slow. I center my process around a sense of place that is more representative of a mind state or feeling than a physical reality and light and color are at the forefront of my decision making process. I think a lot about overlapping frames and spaces, filters and surfaces that make up snapshots of a mind that is navigating both physical and non physical spaces. I want there to be a sense of calm always playing with shifting planes and color. For me this represents a new nature of the mind, one that is having to digest a constant barrage of information and form it into a kind of setting to navigate. My hope is that my paintings feel familiar but anchored in an unsettled reality. A mental array of frames and filters, pieces that we gather from our screens in our pockets and homes just as much if not more than nature and what’s around us."
