Sub-Urban Commentaries & Gutter Punk Space Opera

Massengale & Rasmussen

This two-person exhibit of paintings and drawings, featuring Jordan  Massengale (Sub-Urban Commentaries) and Bryce Rasmussen (Gutter Punk Space Opera), brings together a contemporary artist (currently based in Florida) and a self-described “lo-fi fine artist” from Vancouver.

Sub-Urban Commentaries
Jordan Massengale’s work is concerned with figurative painting and suggests a likeness of volume and space that resembles what is apparent in both the physical and virtual worlds. In each painting and drawing, he considers natural phenomenon such as light, atmosphere and man-made features in order to create narrative pictures that oscillate between reality and fiction. Each finished piece is derived from the rich visual world including printed media, empirical experiences regarding physical nature and the complexity of imagination.

“Thematically, through picture making, I address the manner in which mechanical forms, humans and animals commingle in their environments, while considering displacement, violence, beauty, noise, and imminence as pictorially communicative devises.”

Massengale has a BFA at University of Windsor, and an MFA in painting/drawing at University of Miami, Florida (1996).  His exhibition history includes solo shows at Dorsch Gallery (Miami),  Tachmes Gallery (Miami), group shows at Rafael Hernando Perez Arts Contemporaneo (Madrid, Spain), and Hollywood Art and Culture Centre (Hollywood, Florida) – with upcoming solo shows at St. Thomas Elgin Public Art Centre (London, Ontario), and Heresfordshire Center for the Arts (UK). Teaching since 1996, he has been a faculty member of Florida International University, Miami-Dade College,  Miami International University and currently Broward College and University of Miami.

Gutter Punk Space Opera
Vancouver-based Bryce Rasmussen’s Gutter Punk Space Opera chews on the themes of outsider, a reflection of his childhood, weaving epic-personal myths, populated with monsters, spaceships and bedraggled heroes that seem to stumble through the backwaters of the mind. The work emerges through a liberal use of whatever medium is available – most often from the alleys around town. Rasmussen’s work is a cheerful noir romp through sci-fi, comics and isolation filtering the culture and street environ through a wonky lens.

“I started painting, doodling and sketching just before high school. Usually painting after homework, into the wee hours.  Those works are long gone, but several people own my works.”

Rasmussen has shown at the Tart, the Big Red Dot, in group shows at Gallery Gachet, and at Lollapalooza ’92. He contributed to the Woodward’s Mural Project organized by CACV, featured on the hoarding.