End in the Beginning: Maggie Lyon & Shelby Sult
Opening Date: Fri Mar 26 5–8p
Exhibition: Mar 26 - April 25
ArtUS Co Gallery
10000 Research Blvd Unit #118 Austin, TX 78759
Gallery Hours: Mon-Sat 11a-7p & Sun 12-6pArtUs Co presents artists Shelby Sult and Maggie Lyon in End in the Beginning, a duo exhibition of mid-to-large scale oil paintings and photography that represent each artists’ personal truths through the lens of time. Painting as a means of introspection, Lyon deals with personal identity and depicts obscured memories in her nostalgic work. By visually depicting her inner mindscape, Sult aims to replicate her present experience in a way that viewers can sympathize with. In End in the Beginning, both artist’s colorful paintings offer a window into their own personal realities, past and present.
About the Artists
Maggie Lyon
Maggie Lyon is an oil painter capturing a range of subjects; each painting dives into an inward reflection. Whether it may be a portrait, or an object acting as a symbol of nostalgia, Lyon is inspired by photographs from her family archive. Working in thin layers, she takes creative liberty in the negative space and plays up the colors from her photo source. Her evocative paintings do not serve as an accurate narrative of her past, but rather one of obscured memories. Lyon received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Texas State University in 2019, and continues her practice out of her ArtUs Co Studio in Austin, Texas.
Shelby Sult
My work is about finding meaning and navigating through an absurd world. My paintings are a visual representation of this inexplicable internal experience that I aim to replicate through initiating a synthetic experience between the work and viewer, relying on sympathy. I experiment with color’s influential abilities, and how the use of extremely saturated colors hijack the human brain through an intense visual experience. This tension is enhanced through the visual imagery, which represents a suspension of breath. The highly incorporated elements of color, figure, and material are calculatedly disorienting, and function inextricably as they work together to make up the painting.
As humans, a relationship with one’s self is something that is universally experienced to some degree, and this experience can take endless forms. I aim to portray a disconnect, when one’s headspace and physical presence seem to be suffering incompatibility. This idea has roots in an existentialist idea known as “the existentialist attitude,” or a sense of disorientation, confusion, or dread in the face of meaningless world. Rather than pessimistically, the opportunity to create meaning and define existence is represented positively through my work. I present numerous dualities to the viewer to experience and interpret: breath and suffocation, life and death, meaning and absurdity.