Ivy Brown Gallery Presents: Tim Groen / Captions
March 3 – April 22, 2011

Ivy Brown Gallery is pleased to announce artist/designer Tim Groen’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Tim Groen has been creating an ongoing series of collages, titled Captions, based on the copy clarifying book illustrations. Hand cutting each letter, using a font based on a 19th century wood type, he mounts the descriptive texts on identically sized boards (16” X 20).

“By taking all these texts, I’m creating this seemingly random assortment,” he explains, “But in the end, since each one is picked by me, it says something about where my head is at, what kind of books I’m looking at, what sticks out to me…”
The appeal to Tim is that Captions almost reads like a personal diary, yet there is something universal about these short, isolated texts. Picking captions that run the gamut from the idyllic to the disastrous (Unfolding leaf buds of a Fatsia Japonica, versus 7 Auschwitz 1957,) he also finds himself using captions that leave little doubt as to their book-specific origins: Facing Page: Detail of Fig. 50.
“Referring to the fact that these are all pulled from books is important to me,” he says, “It anchors the concept, because in the end, this series is about my love for books.”

While he has made a stylistic choice of only using lower case, the captions themselves, including all punctuation and abbreviations, are lifted verbatim. Each piece is titled after the book it was pulled from, and frequently includes the author’s name. For example, the collage that says A Thank-You Note From The First Lady, is titled Stork Club, Blumenthal.

The Captions in the exhibition represent a selection from the series; Tim is continuously creating new additions.