Perspectives

Renee Hanan Plata, Elisabeth Pellathy, Chiharu Roach

March 3-19, 2022

Elisabeth Pellathy works in a variety of mediums, responding to locations, history, and social context. She sees physical and digital manipulation of material as parallel processes. An open dialogue between these realms provides a generative space for her exploration of materiality and process. Tactile and digital, act as metaphors for the complexity of the space in-between, the slippage of the moment. Often, ecological concerns or more specifically, issues of disappearance, are themes in her work. Urgency in issues of language, fragility, loss, (in)visibility, tactility, and magnification emerge. Pellathy received her MFA from the division of expanded media at Alfred University School of Art and Design, NYSCC. She works as an associate professor of new media at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Renee Hanan Plata, an Alabama native, received her BFA from Atlanta College of Art, MFA from Tyler School of Art, and MSEd from Bank Street College. Renee maintained a painting studio in New York for twenty years and joined a group of abstract painters represented in the exhibition Painting Up Front at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, curated by Thomas Leavitt. Plata’s work draws vigorously on the genre of geometric abstraction and her methodology often employs a minimalist approach. Her paintings are grounded by and play with the fundamental elements of art – color, form, line, and texture.

Chiharu Roach is from Nagoya, Japan where she earned a degree with an emphasis on child psychology. After moving to Birmingham in 2001 and getting her BFA from the University of Alabama in Birmingham, she began painting with acrylic paint and her tangled hair series, in which she explores the spiritual connection between humans and their range of behaviors and emotions. Chi often portrays cultural differences and stereotypes between Japan and America based on her experiences from living in both countries. At Ground Floor Contemporary, Chi is challenging herself to use 2D, 3D art, and mixed media to express themes of memories, spirituality, loss, and humanity.