Erika Wastrom - In Light of Nothing

Gaa Gallery Provincetown is pleased to present In Light of Nothing, an exhibition of new work by Erika Wastrom. In Light of Nothing is a series of midscale, mixed media works on paper that employ Wastrom’s masterful takes on color, scale, and open narratives.

Her collage-like, two dimensional portraits and still lifes conflate delight and mystery, activity and stillness. The nimble movement inherent in this exhibition suggests the layered meanings and emotional resonance found in observation: Wastrom’s world of texture, pattern and figures resonates and pulses with the story of a life lived in the company of others.

In Light of Nothing presents the artist at work— small tables elegantly scattered with watercolor cast offs; a woman painting beneath a fort-like dome of blankets; a kneeling figure surrounded by her own small paintings. Other works present modernity’s close quarters: a wall mounted television that hovers above an off kilter tablescape; a sketchbook sharing space with a disinfectant spray bottle. The ordinary and the extraordinary are interchangeable in this new work, in which the ultimate yield is sublime.

Erika Wastrom (b. 1984, Barnstable, MA) lives and works in Barnstable, MA. Wastrom received her MFA from Boston University in 2012, and recent solo exhibitions include This Must be the Place, Gaa Gallery, Wellfleet, MA and group exhibitions The Grass is Green, Gaa Gallery, Cologne Project Space, Cologne, Germany; Summertime, Gaa Gallery, Wellfleet, MA; New Talent, ArtSTRAND, Provincetown, MA; and Asterisk Projects, AAF, New York.

In Light of Nothing opens Friday, September 7, from 6-9pm at Gaa Gallery Provincetown, 494 Commercial Street.