ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — A new multimedia art exhibit is coming to Pink Dog Creative, a studio and exhibition space located in the River Arts District.
The exhibition, “The Incidental Moment,” will feature the work of married artists, painter Joanie Krug and photographer Alan Wieder.
Pink Dog will host an opening reception for “The Incidental Moment” from 4 to 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 5 at their gallery on 348 Depot Street. The exhibit will run from Friday, April 4 to Sunday, May 4.
The name of “The Incidental Moment” comes from the snapshots of time that Krug and Wieder depict in their work.
“It just struck me that our work captures a minute in time,” Krug shared. “There’s something about that spontaneity and that gestural spirit that is very attractive to me.”
“That’s a common theme in photography,” Wieder agreed. “A moment in time. I usually take anywhere between four and eight photographs of the people I take photographs of and very often it’s the first click that ends up being the best one.”
Though Krug and Wieder operate in different mediums, they decided their artwork could fit in an exhibit together.
“Our work specifically doesn’t reflect the same theme always, but we have commonality in our effort in representing humanity,” Krug explained.
Krug’s paintings depict ephemeral, pastel-toned people in faceless abstraction.
“I have always been interested in gesture. My work, outside my painting world, was always people-oriented. I worked in special education for many years and supported families and administrators,” Krug said. “I do a lot of work that taps into emotional expression and connection between people. Mostly women, actually.”
However, despite the exploration of emotional expression in Krug’s paintings, they lack facial expressions entirely.
“I prefer to be more implied in my facial gestures and have the viewer make their own story to what they see. I’m not interested in being a photorealist or a portrait painter,” Krug explained. “I’m more interested in having an implication of emotion or environment or an atmosphere.”
Wieder’s photos, meanwhile, are rendered in crisp, detailed black-and-white. Each one of them is a portrait of a different person Wieder encountered in the early days of the couple’s August 2024 move to Asheville, and each exists in a continuum of oral storytelling Wieder has spent his career as a photographer and educator exploring.
In fact, Wieder takes the opposite approach to Krug when it comes to capturing faces.
“My photography connects to what I was as a professor. I’ve done interviews. I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of interviews of people around themes, and my photographing in two ways is storytelling,” Wieder said. “In one way, it’s storytelling individual stories, more so in this show. People, when you look into their eyes, or possibly see some gesture, but more of looking their faces and looking in their eyes, I don’t try to tell the story with words in that.”
With his other storytelling method, Wieder pairs community interviews with his photos, creating long form narratives of portrait and place. While his “The Incidental Moment” series does not include interviews, they do come together to present Asheville in a collection of people.
The other reason Krug and Wieder wanted to do a show together, they said, is that they hope to meet more of Asheville through their work. The couple’s move to Asheville preceded the Hurricane Helene disaster by a matter of weeks, making the already difficult task of finding community in a new place even harder.
For Krug, that feeling came out in her artwork.
“Being kind of new in this community and feeling a sense of solitude, not knowing a lot of people, being more alone, there’s some sense of that in my more recent pieces in the show. There’s a sense of alone and together versus connection, as you’ll see if you see the show in total,” Krug said. “The moment now is kind of moving into a new community and trying to find our way.”
“What I would add, and I think we both feel this, is that we are incredibly fortunate to have a show this quickly being in a new town,” Wieder said.
For more information about “The Incidental Moment,” visit www.pinkdog-creative.com.