faina lerman & graem whyte @ cass cafe

Faina and Graem explore similar utopic worlds in their works. Their works act in a sort of yin yang effect where one starts where another one ends: the blurring of other worlds from 2d mark making branches to 3d folding Rubik's planes.



Faina's paintings are filled with tiny, intricate doodles, washes of neutral colors and bolder explosions of darker thick brush strokes. She explores the picture plane in archaeological way of exposing layers of marks, showing history of graphite squiggly lines and then allowing the paint to cover other areas in sweeping swirls that dance between lines. I notice a little bit of contemporary painter cecily brown in her work.

I like faina's new works a lot. She is incorporating a form or body in them that she describes as being an influence from her recent preparation for writing children's stories.





Crazy detroit attacking chicken creature!



Faina's teeny make believe world.

Graem has some new work on display too. I am familiar with graem's "chewy" series and paper folding sculpture but he has a new series of small model worlds of grassy planes that formulaically fold apart. They are like golf coarse architectural models that have angular fault lines that have caused them to splice into pieces. They are a nice progression from the previous folded paper pieces.






I could have snatched up this small grassy tri-plane world...but it was already sold :(

Way to make a regular Farmer Jack bag into art origami!

Older works from graem...they look like the marks in faina's paintings if they had been put out to dry.

Great show...I just have to figure out how to look at work at Cass without annoying the people eating...oh, well!