tad greenwald & elijah ruhala: ephemera(lity)
August 7 - September 4, 2021
Press Release
Ro2 Art is proud to present Ephemera(lity), featuring new paintings by Tad Greenwald and Eli Ruhala. The exhibition will run from August 7 through September 4, 2021. The exhibition will open with a reception at Ro2 Art in The Cedars, located at 1501 S. Ervay St, Dallas, TX, 75215 and will take place from Saturday, August 7 from 7-10pm.
Tad Greenwald and Eli Ruhala capture time through diametrically opposed visual processes, yet complement each other in terms of space. For Ruhala’s works, the substrate is formed through joint compound and pigment, with the images emerging from a reductive technique of carving into the surface. Greenwald’s water media pieces are additive, capturing landscapes marked by decaying vehicles. A dialogue emerges between these two bodies of works, as if the figures in the interior scenes depicted by Ruhala may be the same ones that once drove the corroding “land yachts” parked in the realistically rendered West Texas panoramas. What both processes have in common is the impossibility of erasure, much like how actions or words cannot be unsaid, a mark cannot be unmade. This analogue to human experience in the development of images upon these substrates gives voice to memory in all its contexts, brief, calming, jarring, life defining. |
about the artists
Tad Greenwald was born in Dallas, Texas in 1999. He will be receiving his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Spring 2021. His first Solo Exhibition Marathon, Texas is forthcoming at the MICA Pinkard Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland. Greenwald has also exhibited in numerous group exhibitions including Preview #8 at the Leidy Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland, and Art.Write.Now.2018 National Exhibition at the Parsons School of Design in New York, New York.
Elijah Ruhala is an artist based in North Texas working in building material to narrate personal history. Raised in Fairview, TX, his work reflects on his and his partners lived experience of being homosexual in spaces that adhere to tradition and conservative values. Elijah currently attends The Maryland Institute: College of Art under the Fanny B. Thallheimer scholarship where he studies under faculty Sangram Majumdar and Joan Watson. There, he has begun to question how paintings are accessed and the interactive qualities latent in the materials he works with. Through curation and programming, Elijah also strives to be involved both with the artistic community that thrives in the city and the lack thereof in the rural countryside. Currently, he is undertaking a project called don’t Forget Me, A group show exploring the lasting impact of mark. |