Portia Mortensen, Floating, Colored crayon, acrylic and oil on canvas, 30" x 40"

June 6 - September 25, 2025
Gallery Exhibition

Haeley Kyong, Wes Memeger, and Portia Mortensen
Beauty in Unwavering Truths

In a universe of great complexity, sometimes the quiet and simple things can resonate most deeply. The simplest shapes compose the form of many of our most rudimentary understandings of the world, and the laws of geometry are immutable facts that bind the very fabric of our existence. In Beauty in Unwavering Truths, artists Haeley Kyong, Wes Memeger, and Portia Mortensen investigate these fundamentals and highlight the beauty in the simple forms of squares, circles, and diamonds, each finding their unique aesthetic voices through experimentation in color, light, and composition.

Haeley Kyong works particularly in soft pastel colors and keeps her compositions abstract and minimalist. For example, Harmonic Progression, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 x 2 inches, is a mathematical expression of emotion. The painting’s gentle hues of pink and purple accompany the generous use of circles and squares to mimic the mathematical formula of the Fibonacci sequence. The spiraled pattern often appears in nature and is called the “golden ratio” for its aesthetic appeal. Despite its simple components, Kyong takes advantage of the golden ratio to create an aesthetically elevated piece.

The late Wes Memeger took a similar approach to his work, developing abstracted pieces from shapes he became enchanted by through his work as a polymer chemist. Like Kyong and Mortenson, Memeger found beauty in the simplicity of shapes and the evolution of each piece as he created each composition using the eternal geometric models. In his, Squares, Circles, Arcs, and Lines Together, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72 inches, Memeger explores luminous warm tones to create a similar depth to his piece as the composition recedes into the background. Austere shapes and a lush monochromatic color palette form the complex pictorial structure.

Portia Mortensen, too, composes her work out of the foundational elements of shape and color. Her use of light and shadow plays with one another to simulate 3D forms in the diamond shapes, producing “spinners.” In Rainbow and Blue Spinners on Checkers, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 inches, the simple shapes seem to move on the canvas, the contrasting saturations adding to its depth. Of the three artists, Mortensen adds a stark asymmetry to her work with the roughly sketched diamond shapes to reinforce the beauty of the composed spinners.

Together, the works of Kyong, Memeger, and Mortensen serve as a compelling reminder that complexity is not a prerequisite for profundity. Through their shared focus on elementary shapes and disciplined exploration of light, color, and form, these artists reveal geometry's quiet elegance and expressive power. Though rooted in the familiar, their pieces transcend the ordinary to evoke wonder, movement, and emotional resonance—showcasing that there is infinite space for artistic discovery within unwavering truths.

- Curated by Phoebe Caswell