past show

Wade Aaron earned his MFA at the Museum School in Boston. Now living in New York, Wade will be included in a major exhibition exploring light- and text-based work at the opening of the Museum of Fine Arts' new Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art later this year. Space/Light/City presents a range of drawings and prints that display Wade's abilities as a drafter and sculptor. In two of his constructions, dozens of intersecting lines and sail-shaped metal leafing form geometric architectural plans, but with movement and billowing life that liberate them from the drawing board. In another work, he repeatedly uses the image of a chair from one of his light installation to form a perfectly symmetrical crystal of black snow against a multicolored background. It is the intersection of a world that never had solid form and a world with form too small for us to see.

Kenji Nakayama, born in Tomokomai, Japan, was educated as a mechanical engineer before moving to Boston to study traditional sign painting and dedicate himself to life as a solo and collaborative artist. With successes in Boston, New York, Australia and Japan, Kenji creates large- and small-scale work ranging from carefully rendered pinstriping and stylized lettering to hand-cut, multi-layered stencil paintings that document and respond to the urban environment around him. In Space/Light/City his solo paintings present a multi-colored scripts of words that are as loosely or closely associated with each other as those on faded billboards or diner menus. With collaborator Dana Woulfe (see below), Kenji's paintings capture the dichotomous whirl and stillness of the urban soul.

Lynda Schlosberg received her MFA in painting at the Art Institute of Boston and now lives in Lexington. Her work, widely seen across New England, gives form to the physical theory that space is never empty or still. In Space/Light/City Lynda meditates on the array of electrical currents, digital impulses and magnetic forces that invisibly mingle and flicker in the space around us. Each painting depicts a nearly imperceptible geometry constructed of thousands of tiny brushstrokes and minute forms that assert themselves immediately before they are reabsorbed into a constantly evolving background.

Dana Woulfe became interested in Boston's graffiti scene while attending the Massachusetts College of Art. After joining Project SF, a Boston-based international collective of urban artists, designers and musicians, he embarked on a successful career as a solo and collaborative painter, muralist and installation artist in Boston and New York. In Space/Light/City Dana presents a series of "splash" paintings in which loose, glossy color can suggest high-speed motion, oil on water or the blinding arc of a welder's torch. His collaborative work with Kenji Nakayama (above) highlights their opposing fondness for chaos and order. That they resolve their differences to seamless effect is a tribute to their talent as artists and closeness as friends.