New York, April 15 — C24 Gallery is pleased to announce Extravagant Features, a group exhibition curated by Clarissa Dalrymple. The exhibition includes the work of Davide Balliano, Jane Corrigan, Jane Kaplowitz, Alfred Leslie, Jon Rafman, William Stone, Rohan Wealleans, Rob Wynne and Magic Flying Carpets of The Berber Kingdom of Morocco. The exhibition will be on view May 7 – June 22, 2013. There will be an opening reception on Tuesday, May 7, from 6 – 8pm.

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Through the years, Clarissa Dalrymple has honed a keen sensibility to recognize artists at various stages of their careers. Her acute observations of the international landscape of museum exhibitions, art fairs and gallery shows provides her the opportunity to bring the work of emerging and seasoned artists to the attention of a wider audience. For Extravagant Features, Dalrymple brings together a selection of artists who express a form of exaggeration in their depiction of the human figure. With an element of caricature and abstraction, the works in the exhibition convey the allure of the figure, notions of the absurd, and at times, the vulnerability of the human body.

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Multimedia artist Davide Balliano uses performance, drawing, video, photography and installation to delve into the most deeply hidden aspects of the human mind, revealing their fragility and contradictions through physical attributes.

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Jane Corrigan’s intimately scaled canvases depict laborers from various historical periods. Rather than create historically accurate work, Corrigan allows her imagination to dictate the scenes and demonstrates her belief of time as malleable and of history as source that can be reshaped into fiction.

In the work of Jane Kaplowitz, cultural icons are imbued with emotion and nostalgia. From Hollywood characters such as Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh and Robert DeNiro, to violence and fashion-obsessed hip-hop artists, to clichéd members of the gay community, she expresses sincerity and sentiment in her subjects, through their own outward appearance.

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After gaining recognition as Abstract Expressionist painter in the late 1940s and 1950s, Alfred Leslie’s long career includes works in many styles and media, including photography and film. Since the 1960s, he has turned to the figure as his subject matter and his style become more realistic. He often works in grisaille, creating large-scale oil paintings depicting various configurations of the body.

William Stone’s sculptural works appropriate everyday objects, furniture and forgotten paintings, bringing them new life through modification. In doing so, Stone invites the viewer to contemplate the boundaries of utilitarianism, design, art, and the body.

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Jon Rafman brings new meaning to the idea of found art by appropriating images from the virtual world, particularly from Google Street View. Through an indifferent camera and unaware subjects, Rafman’s images both celebrate and critique our modern existence and our physical presence in the world.

New Zealand-based artist Rohan Wealleans’s monstrous and colorful creations use paint as a transformative force that reaches beyond the realm of the ordinary into a reality that could be based in science fiction. Wealleans uses the body as a canvas, painting and bedazzling figures in order to create characters rooted in the fantastical and the otherworldly.

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Rob Wynne’s paintings, installations and objects play with language and common symbols to create works that are both visually arresting and surprising in their power to create new and fluid meaning. A technical master, Wynne works in many media including glass, ceramic and painting, often incorporating reflective surfaces that distort the viewer’s image.

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Also included in Extravagant Features is Magic Flying Carpets of The Berber Kingdom of Morocco, an ongoing curated project of carpets from the rural Berber women in Morocco. The rugs incorporate asymmetrical designs and traditional symbols that often represent female body parts in unusual color combinations. The project strives to spur production of rugs in order to maintain the weaving traditions of the rural Berber women. The carpets are all original, unique, and composed from a variety of sources: from handspun wool to recycled materials. The proceeds from the rug sales go directly to the women who create them.