Anderson Yezerski's new exhibit invites viewers to ‘fall apart'

Boston Globe

01-07-2025

The South End gallery's exhibit runs through July 26. The show features eight contemporary artists whose work range in both size and medium, including paintings, fabric work, photography, and printmaking.
Anderson said she wanted the show to be fairly open-ended so people could apply their own narratives and make connections for themselves, noting that generally, in art, 'with each person that looks at a piece, that piece starts evolving.'
'That is what brings me joy, as a gallerist, talking to people and just seeing what they're extracting from this show,' Anderson said.
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Megan Weeda, "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit" flanked by Tim McCool, 'Little Truck Painting,' left, and Hannah Altman, 'Beyond the Pale.'
Renee Anderson
Megan Weeda, a recent master's graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Art at Tufts University, agreed. She said as an artist, her favorite part of an exhibit is watching people interact with her work and having conversations about it.
One of Weeda's pieces, 'Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit,' an oil painting of her family dog, Molly, served as a catalyst for Anderson's initial conversations about the exhibit's theme.
The painting, along with 'What She Doesn't Know Can't Kill Her,' a three-piece oil painting, are part of Weeda's thesis collection. Within the collection, she grapples with memory as a person with aphantasia, the inability to form mental images.
Both paintings are vibrant reiterations of found photos from her childhood, featuring three partial or full duplicates of the subject to symbolize Weeda and her two sisters' experiences of the same memory. These duplicates add an almost absurdist or unsettling nature to the art that Weeda wants to lean into in the future.
With each piece, she invites viewers to take long looks while contemplating the work and their personal relationships with memory.
'There's nothing like having that physical interaction with a body of work that's integral to the understanding and kind of dissecting what's being said,' Weeda noted.
For Tynan Byrne, a second-year master's student at Lesley University, the viewer plays a nuanced role in his pieces, 'Bolero' and 'Dan in 5.' The two plexiglass laser-etched prints are continuations of his project 'Fraternity Sought,' which explores male intimacy and challenges notions about nudity's confinement to sexual situations.
'Bolero,' a black-and-white miniature replica of a larger photo collage, was born of falling apart, Byrne said. The piece features a cyclical arrangement of fragmented images that don't allow the eye to rest, borrowing its looping nature from the orchestral
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Byrne described the piece as gazing into an 'infinite loop' that wrestles with the male form, affection, and platonic and romantic relationships; topics he has himself wrestled with.
While 'Dan in 5,' is a 'pale mint-green etching of Byrne's friend looking into a closet while his reflection sits off to the left, plays with depth of focus. The etching prompts viewers to ruminate on the platonic or romantic nature of the image and question where they place their focus.
Tynan Byrne, "Dan in 5."
Tynan Byrne
Byrne said he likes it when 'a little spinach' gets stuck in viewers' teeth and they 'kind of fish around all day long afterward and be like, 'Huh? Something's caught in my craw about that and I feel unresolved about it. It's a feedback loop, and I want that feedback loop to include viewership.'
After the show had been open for a week, Anderson said 'Falling Apart Conceptually' has been met with much curiosity, with some people describing it as 'trippy.'
'One thing that always surprises me is how people can react to the same piece so differently,' Anderson said. 'There is a lot of room for interpretation here, and I am seeing people feel that agency.'
FALLING APART CONCEPTUALLY
At Anderson Yezerski Gallery, 460 Harrison Ave. A16, through July 26. 617-262-0550, andersonyezerski.com