This January, Stephanie Chefas Projects is opening two shows, Jeff Sheridan's As Above in their main gallery and Anya Roberts-Toney's Soft Curses in their gallery annex.
Jeff Sheridan
Known for his monochromatic imagery, Sheridan’s work explores self-organizing symmetries in the natural world. Affected by elemental conditions, natural objects organize in a way that is neither crystalline nor inorganic. Water erosion sculpts mountains as life populates the resulting fertile pockets. Thematic and fluid, these natural symmetries are accentuated through repetition, which in turn creates texture and form structures in negative space.
In As Above, the artist moves beyond logical assumptions to ask questions such as “What is the natural mind?" and "What can be obtained from an 'archaic' mind?” Sheridan elucidates, “The modern technological supposition that we are the highest order of human to live on this planet is flanked by a great body of thought still influencing our lives, an ancient mind unable to separate subjective and objective, finding meaning in every great cosmic or earthly rumbling. This old mindset still holds a key to linking these realities. It’s also this archaic mind that got us in this present predicament. Which is a predicament in itself.”
Taking Sheridan's concept to an even higher plane, As Above captures the essence of a shifting cosmos. A cold and chaotic wind of dreams, power, and potentiality drift over a perpetually eroding landscape, life trickles in, flourishes, and disappears. Supervised by resident solar deities, light itself becomes the only real protagonist in our eternal drama.
Anya Roberts
In her latest collection of work, Roberts-Toney explores feminine power and the hope she experiences through both witnessing and embracing that power. Consequently, her paintings come imbued with formidable energy, the kind of which invokes a perennial sense of much-needed change.
“A curse is a spell that lingers. It’s a means for a ritual. A tool for a conjuring. Capable of hope. The supposition of power.”, states Roberts-Toney. “The paintings in this series begin with the premise of hope and the simple shape of a horizontal ring of flowers, or sometimes just the ring itself. The ring has a feminine quality, and I think of it as a location for ritual or a space for transformation. I don’t know exactly what the ritual will bring, or what will arise from the transformation, but I hope that it is something good.”
