Earth in Upheaval

The Cincinnati Arts Association's Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts announces three new exhibitions: The Ashes, an ambitious and contemplative site-specific installation by David Rohs; Earth in Upheaval, a new series of intricate and enigmatic collages by Jenny Honnert Abell and Michael Scheurer; and Anthem, an imaginative and exuberant installation of quilted assemblages by Denise Burge that pushes the boundaries of quiltmaking to new extremes. 

Jenny Honnert Abell and Michael Scheurer share a fascination with collage and its evocative power to create new meaning through the juxtaposition of disparate images and materials. Relishing in the great abundance of our society’s castoffs and discarded materials, Honnert Abell and Scheurer mine the vast resources of regular "junking" and scavenging forays to flea markets and auctions. Through skillful manipulation and intuitive juxtaposition of selected segments from this diverse inventory, they independently produce intricate and enigmatic works.

Earth in Upheaval continues an artistic relationship that developed when Honnert Abell and Scheurer shared a studio in Cincinnati in the 1980s and represents the first time they have jointly exhibited their collages. For the exhibition, Honnert Abell, a Cincinnati native who relocated to Santa Rosa, California in 1996, has produced a new series of collages that utilize the central form of a flower dissected into many parts and abstracted into an evocative form through obsessive and meticulous manipulation. The resulting works reveal beautiful and seductive surfaces that lure the viewer.

Michael Scheurer, a lifelong resident of Cincinnati, will compliment Honnert Abell’s work with a new series of intimate and enigmatic collages culled from his vast stockpile of printed materials that reference a history of past lives and cultures. In addition, Scheurer will present a further evolution of these works that has been digitally manipulated and enlarged to poster scale.

Scheurer has a degree in fabric design from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, although both he and Honnert Abell consider themselves self-taught artists. The success of their independent artistic careers, as well as their ongoing artistic relationship, can be attributed to their instinctual need to physically construct things in a spontaneous and uninhibited way. As an artist living in Cincinnati, Jenny Honnert Abell exhibited her work at the Carnegie Arts Center, Brianni & Miotto Co. and Miller Gallery. Since moving to California, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions in regional venues including Sebastopol Center for the Arts and the Sonoma Museum of Visual Art. Michael Scheurer has exhibited his work in numerous local venues, including a major exhibition presented at the Contemporary Arts Center in 1988. His work is included in many local private collections.