Parlor Gallery
Jill Ricci
Born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island by artistic parents, Ricci has been creating art since a young age, and never really stopped the practice. After first studying art formally at Smith College, she then moved to Chicago to receive her Masters in Art Therapy at the Art Institute of Chicago. After a brief stint living in Spain and her first inspiring and mystifying visit to Morrocco, Ricci then returned to Chicago and spent most of her twenties working in galleries and painting commissioned murals in public venues, on the streets of Chicago, on the exteriors of buildings and in private residences. This work led to the creation of her company, Surface Art Design, which combined commissioned art, murals, decorative painting and Interior Design and allowed her to employ and collaborate with many artists and friends.
In 2004, Ricci moved back to the east coast and once relocated, she found the space and time to be a full time artist and began exhibiting with both local, national and international galleries. Ricci opened Parlor Gallery in Asbury Park, NJ in 2009 with her friend, business partner and fellow art lover, Jenn Hampton, and now splits her time between making art and promoting, curating and providing exposure to other artists.
“Found images and objects function as signifiers of both individual and collective experience. By incorporating materials that are linked to the realities of daily life, I strive to establish an immediate identification between the viewer and the work of art. I am exploring the place between “high art” and popular culture, text and image, figuration and abstraction, past and present , and two and three-dimensional space. By combining elements of advertising ephemera, hand-stenciled papers, global motifs, design and abstraction I create work that feels both ancient and modern. With contemporary graphics layered under the patina of paint, these pieces feel like we are peeling back the scales from the antiquated to find that what is hidden beneath is not obsolete, but avant-garde.”
Porkchop
Porkchop is a multi-disciplinary artist from New Jersey. He has an MFA in Sculpture from VCU and a BFA in Fine Arts from University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Porkchop has established a great presence through his magnificently scaled murals, including the extensively documented scenes he composed along the Asbury Park Boardwalk in conversation with the sea. Narrative is a prevalent theme in his work. Porkchop’s mixed-media paintings and sculptures combine vintage images with darker scenarios and twisted iconography. He creates these situations by combining paint, illustration, and text. He has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe and is published in “The Greatest Erotic Art of Today” Volume 2, “Eye Candy” and “I Want Your Skull”.
Denizens and visitors to Monmouth County have been enjoying Porkchop’s vibrant and colorful artwork and murals for years, but in most recent manifestation, the artist strips his works of his normally vivid palette and instead employs intentionally ritualistic and graphic monochromatic designs and symbols accented with gold.
Influenced by ancient block printing techniques, history and literature, the artist Porkchop sources out, manipulates, and casts familiar objects. He then painstakingly recreates their surfaces giving them a new existence into a dark and curious storyline. The application of paint into his intentional ritualistic designs followed by flawless coats of glossy resin is an act of pure precision and care, like the work of a surgeon or mortician.
There are often unexpected but pleasant marriages of imagery and object. By stripping these pieces of his usual vibrant palette, Porkchop’s choice of black & white emphasizes the narrative in the works, which becomes difficult to ignore.
Porkchop’s site-specific installation presents the viewer with visions of futuristic antiquities, where the artist creates sculptural versions of esoteric idolatry reminiscent of past civilizations, set in an altar-like presentation. Over the past 10 years, Porkchop has been evolving this concept through the creation of his sculptures. as well as the forming of the design to accompany them.
Through appropriating imagery from multiple cultures and mythologies, the artist creates a new, yet familiar version of religious and mythological iconography and aesthetics. Building on these themes, Porkchop creates installations that combine elements of design with sculpture and upcycled objects, giving the viewer the opportunity to experience the visuals of this quasi-religion.
With the use of upcycled objects; it allows the artist to create a new narrative for them, complete with new identity and purpose, which is a practice that plays on themes of religious augmentation. The viewer is often left with possible new mythology reminiscent of past doctrines.
717 Cookman Ave, Asbury Park, NJ 07712
(732) 869-0606
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