SURVEYED: Renee Couture and Matthew Shelley
Curated by Todd Baldwin
November 6 — December 13, 2015
Opening Reception: Friday, November 6, 2015, 6-10 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, December 5, 2015, 4-5 pm

[Images]

PHILADELPHIA, PA — Thelma Golden writes, “Some place. Any place. No place. What is a place? … It refers not simply to location but, at a deeper level, to home, departure, arrival, and destiny, even fate, our sense of mooring in the world, and our sense of displacement. It is what connects us to our community and what divides us from others.”

Tiger Strikes Asteroid is pleased to present SURVEYED, an exhibit of new works by Renee Couture and Matthew Shelley. Couture’s heavy black-on-black images and Shelley’s light self-supported paper folded collages reveal and question commonly held assumptions about place, boundaries, and organization.

Couture graduated from Buena Vista University (Storm Lake, IA) with a B.A. in Studio Art and Spanish. She spent the next four years rambling throughout the United States and South America working a wide range of jobs from camp counselor to wild land fire fighter to gourmet goat cheese maker, international backpacker to bank employee. She moved to Oregon in 2004 after completing Peace Corps service in Bolivia, South America. Couture has taught a range of art courses in children’s camps in the United States and abroad. She earned her M.F.A. in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, VT. Couture currently teaches art at a small community college and volunteers extensively at the local arts center.

Matthew Shelley is from the Pacific Northwest and earned his B.F.A. from the University of Oregon in Eugene. Shelley went on to complete graduate school at American University in Washington D.C. He relocated to New York and participated in a one-month long residency in Iceland before settling in Philadelphia, PA. His works have been shown nationally and internationally. Shelley’s work can be found in the permanent collection at the Katzen Art Museum and within several private collections throughout the East Coast. He currently lives and maintains a studio practice in Philadelphia, PA.