Pareidolia

Corey Escoto Elizabeth Ferry Eliot Greenwald

Emmanuel Barbault Gallery is pleased to announce Pareidolia, an exhibition co-curated by Emmanuel Barbault and Derek Weisberg featuring works by three New York based artists.

The Virgin Mary in toast, the man in the moon, a Rorschach inkblot test, Rubin’s vase are all examples of pareidolia. Pareidolia is “the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern” (Merriam-Webster). This is a psychological phenomenon in which a vague random stimulus is perceived as significant. Pareidolia speaks to an important question: how do humans impose order to randomness?

The three artists included in this show all make work which attempts to deal with the same perceptory sense of pareidolia. However, instead of letting the viewer find an image within the randomness of a form; each artist has created their own specific forms leading the viewer to some odd perception of something unknown.

Corey Escoto has shown nationally and internationally, with solo exhibitions at Regina Rex, Halsey Mckay, East Hampton, NY; Corbett vs Dempsey, Chicago, IL; Taymour Grahne, New York, NY; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; and is represented by Regina Rex, New York, NY. His work has been included in exhibitions at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn; The ArtHouse at Jones Center, Austin; and international venues including ACC Galerie, Weimar, Germany; Seven Days Brunch, Basel; FRAC Nord-Pas De Calais, Dunkerque, France. He is a recipient of the Gateway Foundation Grant, the Kala Art Institute Residency Program and Fellowship Award, and an Aperture Portfolio Prize finalist. Corey received a BFA from Texas Tech University (2004),an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis (2007), and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2016. He was born in Amarillo, Texas and currently lives in Ridgewood, NY.

Elizabeth Ferry (b. 1982 Springfield, IL) lives and works in New York City. She received her MFA in 2008 from Washington University in St. Louis. She was previously awarded artist in residence at the Cite Internationale des Artes in Paris. Ferry has been included in exhibitions at Canada, Jeffrey Deitch, and Marvin Gardens. She has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Grice Bench in Los Angeles.

Eliot Greenwald was born in 1983 in Portland, Maine. He attended college briefly in New Hampshire where he studied English and film, however, he took a leave of absence in order to dedicate himself to a studio practice and the pursuit of education through experiential means. Over the years, amongst many jobs, Eliot has worked as a lab assistant cleaning test animal cages, a security guard, furniture salesperson, and a one on one special education assistant. He never returned to college and currently works and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Derek Weisberg is an artist living and working in Brooklyn NY. Weisberg received a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA, in 2005. While in Oakland he cofounded and ran Boontling Gallery from 2005-2007. He was also a cofounder of the Oakland Art Murmur, a monthly gallery walk which has now attracted over 1 million visitors to Oakland galleries and art venues. He maintains a disciplined studio practice as well, recently having a solo show at Lefebvre et Fils, in Paris, a two person show with Alice Mackler at Kerry Schuss, and was a recipient of the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program residency, 2018-2019.