Google is Michael Sherwin’s muse.

“The internet has replaced a certain actual physical communication and interface between people,” said the West Virginia-based art professor who will be showing at Roy G Biv gallery this month. “As a society, we’re kind of seeking answers or connections via the internet and social media.”

This idea inspired his 2010 series “Searching.” He searched Google Images for quoted phrases that are part of our lexicon — “tree hugger,” “nature at its best” — and paired together the most intriguing, copyright-free photo results. He compiled the results into 8-by-10-inch books.

“It was so fascinating once I got into it,” Sherwin said. “It’s amazing how wildly different our interpretations are.”

To one user in the abyss of cyberspace, for example, “heaven on earth” meant a mouthwatering cheeseburger. To another it meant a half-dressed woman lounging on a car.

“The whole thing was very revealing,” Sherwin said. “What surprises me more than anything is how the internet has become this expression of who we are as a society, a representation of what we think heaven on earth or nature at its best are. The underlying sort of theme here is searching for images that have some sort of purpose and bouncing those questions off society on the internet. Who knew something as simple as a Google image search could be so telling?”

The photographer has employed the internet in other works as well — in one series he took images of the sky and then superimposed people’s Facebook status updates over the photos — but the greatest theme in his art is something else.

“Interconnectivity is the undercurrent to my work,” Sherwin said. “It’s always been there, these micro and macro connections. I’m fascinated by the everyday and how we can find the cosmic in our own backyard.”

“Constellations” best illustrates this point. The series features Sherwin’s photographs of small rocks lit to look like images of planets in space.

Showing alongside Sherwin in this exhibition is Hans Gindlesberger. His performative photographs are part of a series titled “I’m in the Wrong Film” and use the colloquialism as a metaphor for life when it starts to feel unauthentic.

Gindlesberger and Sherwin have worked out which of their individual pieces would best complement each other; however, that fact has some poetic significance. The two artists have not met yet. Their communications have been through — where else — the internet.

by Jakie Mantey of ColumbusAlive

Rojorshi Ghosh and Ray Klimek bring landscapes and locales to Roy this month. Klimek’s Carbon photograph series seems to depict vast fields of stars or galaxies. It turns out these cosmic vistas are illusions, and the photos are really close-ups of coal mine waste. Coal is often called “buried sunshine” and such metaphorical re-examination of the earthbound is central to Klimek’s work. At the meeting of coal fields and star fields there is space to consider the histories involved in the production of carbon-based life forms and in the production of the energy we use every day.

Other Klimek photos mimic the jagged panoramas of NASA photos, or show what appear to be the barren terrains of distant planets. This series is called Analogs, referring to the simulation of conditions on other planets. These illusions allow the mind to wander between locations, between the miniscule and the massive, the mundane and the exotic. It allows us to look inward and simultaneously outward.

Also concerned with re-examination of space, Rojorshi Ghosh’s work features video projections and light box photographs. Much of Ghosh’s work transports the viewer to the local realities of India’s recent history, but it’s simultaneous specificity and abstraction of image make for an unsettling experience. One projection is a view of an old elevator going up and down, forming shifting black and white patterns as it goes. But this elevator doesn’t exist, because the projection is pieced together video. Thus, to experience this video is to be many places at once.

In the other projection, the black silhouettes of birds wheel over Delhi to a soundtrack of horns, sirens, song, and voices that wanders between music and cacophony. The birds (kites) are considered to be djinn, or spirits, from the city’s past.

Layering of abstraction and representation of location can also be seen in Ghosh’s light boxes. One shows an image of a propaganda poster, torn in half to disfigure the face on it. The images work to situate viewers in recent politics while the abstraction works to distance them.

Shifting location and a multilayered present can be seen in both halves of the show, as the artists re-imagine familiar landscapes as sites for fantasy and play.

By Chris Greathouse

Congratulations to all 2012 exhibition season recipients.

2012 Exhibition Season Schedule

January 7 – 28, 2012

Hans Gindlesberger and Michael Sherwin

February 4 – 25, 2012

Millee Tibbs, Lauren Kalman, and George Gregory

March 3 – 31, 2012

Christopher Greathouse and Angie Zielinski

April 7 – 28, 2012

Dan Solberg and Jacob Tonski

May 5 – 26, 2012

Marty Weishaar and Cayla Skillin-Brauchle

June 2 – 30, 2012

Lali Khalid and Monika Laskowska

July 7 – 28, 2012

Community Outreach Exhibit: TBA

August 4 – 25, 2012

Xiaoshi Qin and Lauri Lynnxe-Murphy

September 1 – 29, 2012

Elena Harvey-Collins, Philip Spangler, and Nate Mathews

October 6 – 27, 2012

Jennifer Anable and Jeremy Stone

November 3 – 24, 2012

Courtney Kessel and Linda Diec

December 1 – 29, 2012

Small Works

Colors and Bottles is a fabulous event where you can sip some wine, create some artwork, and socialize with others. At Roy’s first Colors and Bottles art class the participants created their own version of an abstract contemporary painting. Member artist Tom Kelly guided the artists through the steps to create a piece similar to his own. After a few hours of laughing, socializing, and of course painting, the participants had a fabulous piece of art to take home with them.

By Betsy Schneider

Columbus based corporation “ROYGBIV” has been named in a lawsuit regarding the renovation of a condo in an 11-story Ibiza building. We are ROY G BIV Gallery 501c3, and are in no way affiliated with ROYGBIV corporation, or the lawsuit for that matter. Below is a link to the summary of the suit against ROYGBIV corporation.

http://outlookcolumbus.com/2011/09/find-fraud-september-2011/

The Columbus Foundation is hosting a matching funds donation drive for local non-profits.  Increase your donation to the ROYGBIV Gallery by this Thursday, November 11th via the Big Give http://bit.ly/tbM1xc.

Every dollar you give makes a significant contribution to the gallery.  Help us stay independent with donations!

More information regarding this special event see below or the posted links.

The Big Give will give our nonprofit community an economic boost, helping a wide range of organizations that positively impact our culture and community, including the arts, education, health, human services, conservation, and animal welfare. There is an unprecedented demand for nonprofit programs and services—our diligent nonprofits deserve our support.

On November 10, from 11:00 a.m. to November 11, 11:00 a.m., the Foundation will match credit card gifts of $20 or more made to a central Ohio nonprofits that are a part of The Columbus Foundation’s PowerPhilanthropy. Columbus Foundation donors can also make a minimum grant of $250 through their Donor Advised Fund.

All donations received during The Big Give will be matched through a pro-rated portion of the final match pool—giving everyone who participates the opportunity to have a percentage of their donation(s) matched.

Please mark your calendars for this extraordinary 24 hours. Together, we can increase support for local nonprofits during their most challenging time of the year!

This month at Roy, Summer Zickfoose and Clare Fox mix domestic tradition with utility. Although their materials vary, the work is complementary. Personal memory and family tradition seem to fit seamlessly with more universal meditations on gender norms.

Heavy farm equipment rusts among patterned curtains, teacups, and ribbon. Cyanotypes of women’s garments hang from clotheslines. Decorative prints show modern accessories in a traditional style.

Present and past are interwoven in objects that blend the warmth of rural decor with the cold march of technological progress. Quaint I-pods and cordless drills eerily suggest the rate at which newfangled contraptions become old-fashioned. The present so quickly becomes the past.

There is an attention to the relationship between body and object. Absent bodies are defined by the presence of their accessories. These objects seem to become bodies themselves, complete with internal contradiction.

The effect is a subversion of the familiar, a show that confuses interior and exterior spaces, reshaping internal and external landscapes.

By: Chris Greathouse

Christine Jackson’s work at ROY G BIV this month.  Her work calls attention to detail, to spaces confounded by memory, some hidden or forgotten, some half-remembered. Interwoven shadows and overlapping patterns of paper and emptiness invite the imagination to fill those absences.

This focus on absence, presence, and the transition between is apparent in a large labyrinth that spreads most of a wall in the north gallery.  It is a lithograph on papers of varying sizes and translucencies. With transitions between the second and third dimensions, the labyrinth seems to alternately flatten and layer itself, shifting when you turn your back to it.  It is as though this maze was reconstructed from memory, pieced together from half-remembered places.

Elusive history and the delicate workings of unseen structures take shape in the form of eggshells and thread, a bird’s nest, and test tubes that magnify tiny etchings on their sides.

Adjacent is Sheilah Wilson’s work, which similarly concerns itself with the presence and absence of bodies.  Memory Translation Machine features large format photographic prints that line the walls with abstract forms. They recall early spiritualist’s attempts at communicating with otherworldly presences.

Wilson experiments playfully with the spiritualist belief that spirits passing through the body of a medium could become material again. She blends performance and photography, sleeping on top of printed memories and a roll of color film.  The work explores translations of form and presence, providing a personal look at the storyteller’s relationship to their story. Balancing the recognizable and the absurd, Wilson’s photographs blend the lines of history and fantasy.

By Chris Greathouse

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Small Business Beanstalk (SBB), an organization that promotes the success and growth of local businesses, today announced finalists for its first SBB Local Business Awards.

ROY G BIV is nominated for the Best Local Gallery Category!  Help us by voting at http://thesbb.com/events/local-business-awards.

Winners will be announced at the SBB Awards Gala on September 21, 2011

August on High Street brings heat, back-to-school preparations, and at ROY G BIV a colorful, innovative collection of art. Cloudhaus is an emerging art collective from Columbus that has embellished the white walls of the gallery with eye-catching, one of a kind, vibrant pieces of art – to call these artists creative is an understatement. All of the works are joint efforts, not the work of one artist, but of many. Several pieces are collaborations between the artists in the collective; each person adds their own colors, shapes, designs, and in some cases, creatures, monsters, and people. Other pieces are crowd-sourced, interactive pieces that encourage viewer participation. It is evident by walking through the gallery that this artistic process allows for extremely unique, intensely layered and saturated, and whimsical work.

There are twelve acrylic paintings decorating the walls, all varying greatly in size and imagery. One of the most impressive and thought-provoking pieces is Year One, a massive painting containing all colors imaginable, and images of monsters, cacti, humans, bunnies, and all sorts of indistinguishable creatures. The other paintings, although less monumental in size, contain different color pallets and dozens of fantastical creatures. Each painting varies so greatly from one another, yet the works as a whole appear unified and feed off of one another; the jumble of colors and swirling shapes seem to flow off of one painting and onto another. A beautiful mixed media piece, Anatomically Correct, hangs amongst the vibrant acrylic paintings, and invokes a calmer feeling than the others. It’s pallet of blues and yellows create bizarre and thought-provoking images, including what appears to be a skeleton head and an eye. Whatever media, all of the works demonstrate an unparalleled amount of creativity.

One piece that demands attention in the south gallery is the mixed media piece, Laser Dux vs. Zombies, a work unlike anything ROY has ever displayed. The piece stands tall on four-foot pedestals, where an entire city is recreated in a 3D installation. City buildings, cars, and trees decorate the installation, while zombies move around the space. The audience must shoot the moving zombies with an attached laser gun, and a screen in the background keeps the score. Another interactive piece is located in the north gallery. This untitled performance consists of a model attached to a canvas on the wall, while the Cloudhaus artists paint both her body and the canvas with their signature vivacious imagery. Now that the model is no longer in the gallery, the viewers are able to grab a brush and paint the canvas themselves. These two interactive pieces, although very different from one another, really embody Cloudhaus’s goal. As mentioned in their artist statement, they hope to “involve people in art making and to encourage working with others, defying the archaic thought of an artist as a loner distanced from the world.” Whether working with each other or with audiences, Cloudhaus’s art is truly a dazzling group effort.

By Alex Newman