Groveland Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of The Heavens an exhibit of new paintings by St. Paul artist, Dan Bruggeman. For over 30 years his work has been part of exhibitions across the U.S. including the Albright Knox Museum in Buffalo, the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks, the Museum of Nebraska Art in Kearny, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul. Bruggeman currently teaches in the Fine Art Department at Carleton College in Northfield.

Included in this exhibition will be a new series of landscapes on paper. About this new work, Bruggeman writes:

“My paintings are representations of the midwestern landscape. This subject is compelling because it is vast, a little threatening, and, at times, uncanny. The allegorical scenes I paint exist within this environment and are like idle theater sets, awaiting a protagonist or lamenting its departure. These places and objects have certainly belonged to someone and have shared a form of human intimacy. Had they been watching, they may know more about us than we, them.

“I record the bleak winter vignette, the unmoored chapel, and the clothesline draped with laundry emphasizing their inanimate state; forlorn and poetic. These objects emerge as the subject of my work because I embrace their strangely suspended state of being. That state, which the philosopher Jane Bennett calls “enchantment,” recognizes the unusual and sometimes disturbing aspects of everyday objects and experiences that, once recognized, might help us contemplate our responsibilities as stewards of nature. Their status as a record of human activity reminds me of both the promise and threat that has always told the story of the North American landscape and is a further reminder of the delicate and precarious status of our environment.” 

The exhibition runs concurrently with Walking Distance by Justin Terlecki. Both artists will be present at the opening reception on Saturday, October 22 from 2-5pm. The exhibitions continue through November 26, 2022. For more information please call 612-377-7800 or visit www.grovelandgallery.com.