TJ Ahearn: JUKEBOX (Recent Collages)

TJ Ahearn

JUKEBOX

recent collages

January 30 – March 25, 2016

SHAHEEN is delighted to open the year with “Jukebox,” an exhibition of recent collages by Miami-based artist TJ Ahearn.  There will be an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, January 30^th from 6:30-8:30pm.  The exhibition will continue through March 25^th.

Leveraging her unique and sophisticated sense of composition and design, TJ Ahearn arranges fragments of banality into rich, vibrant, visually profuse and densely layered collages.  Since her 2007 exhibition at SHAHEEN, Ahearn has continued to work from a vast and ever-evolving catalogue of found imagery culled largely from popular magazines, but has abandoned traditional wooden panel supports in favor of executing her collages on the backs of record albums. Selected primarily by the artist, (but sometimes chosen / commissioned by collectors) the albums contain their original vinyl records, and are framed double-sided, so that the collage can be viewed from the front, and the cover can be viewed from the reverse.  Either titled after an individual track on the album on which they are created, or the album as a whole, Ahearn’s collages riff off of the original album cover design, as well as the characteristics, spirit, and her own experience of the recording artist and their music.  Deft and specific in their arrangement, the resulting works are simultaneously open ended in their ability to evoke a broad range of both highly personal and broadly collective allusions and associations.