Megan Marlatt

Substitutions for a Game Never Played
February 1 – March 13, 2013

Megan Marlatt paints mounds of plastic toys, creating artificial landscapes piled high with subtle references to social/political issues and pop culture. Her skilled, observational still lifes are amassed from objects of childhood play, but their material associations evoke narratives and anxieties regarding consumerism, foreign manufacturing, and environmental waste. Technically masterful, Marlatt’s paintings and drawings are both comic and menacing, allowing the viewer to reminiscence lightheartedly about a particular toy or contemplate the magnitude of our immeasurable reliance on plastic.

Marlatt received her BFA from the Memphis College of Art, studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received her MFA at Rutgers University. She has been a professor at the University of Virginia since 1988. She has received an Individual Artist Fellowship in Painting from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Virginia Commission on the Arts and The New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

This exhibition is presented with support from the University of Virginia Dean’s Research Support in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.