St. Pete Art Shows- “Hot Box” at SPACE

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Florida Art Shows, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Performance Art, Photographers / Photography, Pinellas County, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture, St. Pete
Jun 162023
 

The latest pop-up exhibition at Chad Mize’s SPACE in St. Pete’s Warehouse Arts District, is Hot Box, which opened Friday 6/9/23.  The show includes a LOT of artists and installations as well as, for this past weekend, an immersive performance by Dirty John’s comedy troupe.

Below are some of the works from the show-

Jay Hoff, “Criminally Divine”, Lego on Lego

Gianna Pergamo, “Pool Day”, Mixed Media

Miss Crit, “Love and Hisses” Acrylic on Wood

Rhys Meatyard, “Apollo, Artemis, Demeter”, Acrylic on wood

Macy Eats Paint (Macy Higgins), “Pieces of Me”, Mixed Media

In an upstairs section, artist Paul LeRoy has created a mixed media world of art world and celebrity icons, drawings, paintings and more.

The show will be open for its final weekend on Saturday 6/17 from 4-9pm and Sunday 6/18 from 11am-3pm.

St. Pete Art Shows- Green Book of Tampa Bay’s “Poetic Justice Artist Showcase” at The Studio at 620

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Florida Art Shows, Installation Art, Painting / Painters, Pinellas County, Printmaking, St. Pete
Jun 162023
 

Paintings by Tiffany Snow

Work by Ride or Die Rod (left two paintings) and Zulu Painter

Work by Shereka Solomon

Green Book of Tampa Bay’s 3rd Annual Art Show -“Poetic Justice” at The Studio@620 was open to the public for June 2023’s ArtWalk in St. Pete.

In the back gallery were works by artist Dallas Jackson, which combine collage and painting- seen below.

Dallas Jackson, “Sharecropper”, 2018

Dallas Jackson, “Sharecropper”, 2018 (detail)

Dallas Jackson, “Journey to the Valley of Sin”, 2019

Dallas Jackson, “Journey to the Valley of Sin”, 2019 (detail)

This exhibition will be up until the end of June.

 

Vancouver Art Shows- Ben Reeves at Equinox Gallery 2018

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Canadian Art Shows, Collage, Painting / Painters, Vancouver
Jun 152023
 

“Lynn Valley Days II”, 2018, Oil, acrylic and canvas on burlap

“Late Summer”, 2018, Oil on burlap with acrylic on canvas collage

Three paintings from Ben Reeves’ 2018 exhibition Something Edge at Equinox Gallery in Vancouver. The textures from the layers of paint and canvas, as well as his use of color, create lush dreamlike environments.

From the press release-

Ben Reeves’ artistic practice is a way of exploring and learning about the world as well as a material and intellectual pursuit that unfurls not only new understandings about perception but an equal amount of uncertainty, which in turn fuels further curiosity.

Ruminating on his current series of works, Reeves explains: “These paintings are views from one space, looking into another. I equate this with how experiences are always made up of multiple realities, multiple spaces. For example, the present is always haunted by the past. When I think back to my childhood, growing up here on the West Coast, I realize that it was both the place I thought it was and it wasn’t. I didn’t know that the place I grew up in both was and wasn’t itself.” How, then, does an artist begin to address the layered histories embedded in the land?

In most of Reeves’s paintings, a view is projected from high ground (perhaps a North Shore mountaintop), through a tactile forest (perhaps in Lynn Valley), or toward sights of orderly urban vistas in the distance (perhaps Vancouver). The passage from one space to the other is accentuated by a tangle of vines or hanging branches made of cut canvas, which is collaged directly onto the burlap ground of the painting, partially impeding the view forward. These physical “veils” are staunch reminders of that which hovers behind and within, stalling the viewer in the web of the here and now of the foreground, while the coloured glimmer of an unknown future beckons in the distance. This tension between what is known and what is not, between the fleeting images of memory and the starkness of reality, finds its parallel in paint that is directed with great dexterity by an artist whose multifaceted handling of the medium—as it is blotted, dabbed, and dragged—grows increasingly sophisticated at each reveal.

These works also include the unexpected arrival of the human form. While subdued and somewhat abstracted, figures are seen wading at the seashore or swimming at night in the depths of a wide ocean. Disrupting the Western tradition of horizontality to represent a landscape, Reeves’s incongruously vertical canvases compress the scene from the sides. In works where the horizon is visible, he accentuates this faraway perimeter of the world with a horizontal line placed uncannily near the top of the painting, bringing this unknown edge seemingly closer, opening up possibilities for the scrutiny of infinity or other idealized archetypes. These and other places within Reeves’s paintings can be viewed as “something edge”: locations or thoughts that lie both within and beyond our conception.

New Jersey Murals- Princeton- Dave DiMarchi’s “Somatic Pause”

 Art, Artists, Collage, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Installation Art, Mixed Media, New Jersey Street Art, Painting / Painters, Princeton, Printmaking, Public Art, Street Art
May 262023
 

Dave DiMarchi’s Somatic Pause, located in Princeton, New Jersey during Winter/Spring of 2023.

From the Arts Council of Princeton about the mural and artist-

Fashioned after both the artist’s workspace and print editions he created during his Arts Council of Princeton’s Anne Reeves Artist-in-Residency, Somatic Pause invites Princeton to contemplate the transformational power of rest, and how time changes each of us.

Somatic Pause – a wheat-pasted, painted, and collaged installation – is an ephemeral one.  Meant to change over time, the mural will be exposed to harsh winter weather, early spring rains, and glaring sun, each doing its own work to fade, soften, tear, and mar its surface.

Change is the constant.

And about the artist-

Dave DiMarchi is a queer, multi-disciplinary artist working in printmaking, papermaking and sculptural book forms. He engages in a relentless material practice, nurturing ideas into singular and editioned works. As a multi-disciplinary artist, he has exhibited works on paper, installations and books in the US and internationally. He maintains a small collaborative studio and art space in New Hope, Pennsylvania and teaches printmaking, papermaking and book forms extensively throughout the New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania area. In Fall of 2022, he was announced as the ACP Artist-in-Residence which will allow him to continue to explore collage-based multi-media and print works.

Since 2012, he has created his own work, curated exhibitions, provided print exchange opportunities, and published fine art prints as 9INHANDPRESS, a fine art printmaking and education studio located in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

Florida Art Shows- Dunedin City Hall Grand Opening

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Dunedin, Fiber Arts, Florida Art Shows, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
May 242023
 

Rachel Ratcliff, “Roll of the Kaleidoscope”, 2021, acrylic on canvas

Richard Logan “Sea Oats”, 2022, photographic transfer on metal with etched glass

Steven Spathelf, “Orange Blossom”, 2022, acrylic on canvas

This past Friday the city of Dunedin, Florida, celebrated the opening of its new City Hall. As part of the celebration, the building and all of its offices were open to the public. It was the first opportunity to see all the wonderful art by Florida artists- selected and commissioned by Elizabeth Brincklow.

Pictured above are works by Rachel Ratcliff (wave painting) and Richard Logan (photography). The third work is by Steven Spathelf whose oranges can be seen adorning buildings and homes all around town.

Scroll through the pages below to see the other works on view.

NYC Art Shows- Miriam Schapiro at Eric Firestone Gallery

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Conceptual Art, Digital Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
May 092023
 

“Curtains”, 1972, Acrylic and fabric on canvas

“Curtains”, 1972 (detail)

“Voyage”, 1973, Acrylic and collage on canvas

“Shrine: Homage to M.L.”, 1963, Oil on canvas

“Big Ox”, 1967, acrylic on canvas

There’s only a few days left to see Miriam Schapiro: The André Emmerich Years, Paintings from 1957–76 at Eric Firestone Gallery.

From the press release-

Miriam Schapiro (1923–2015) is now well-known as a pioneer of the Women’s Art Movement, and for her contribution to the Pattern and Decoration Movement. She fused craft work, traditionally made by women, with modern painting in collages termed “femmage.” However, this exhibition will additionally shed light on her early Abstract Expressionist canvases, and her pioneering approach utilizing computer technology to create Hard Edge geometric painting in the 1960s. Spotlighting the legacy of this feminist artist, the exhibition will explore three stylistic phases, with significant examples from these two decades of Schapiro’s career.

This exhibition closes 5/13/23.

NYC Art Shows- Ho Jae Kim at Harper’s

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
May 042023
 

“Day 11: Flight Simulator”, 2023 Oil, inkjet transfer, enamel, and paper on canvas

“Carousel”, 2023 Oil, inkjet transfer, enamel, and paper on canvas

“Day 5: In Praise of Shadows”, 2023 Oil, inkjet transfer, enamel, and paper on canvas

“Day 3: Janitor”, 2022 Oil, inkjet transfer, enamel, and paper on canvas

Above are some of Ho Jae Kim’s enchanting mixed media works from his exhibition, Carousel at Harper’s gallery.

From the press release written by the artist-

The centerpiece of this exhibition, its namesake painting, depicts a carousel with 31 horses signifying the days of the month. For each of these “days,” I built a unique narrative in honor of liminal spaces, the mundane, and the quotidian. Just as life continues regardless of our psychology, the carousel will turn whether or not there is a rider. While I prepared for this exhibition, I thought of the displacement I’ve experienced by tragic events out of my control. One summer night in 2022, my stepfather committed suicide. He left a brief note for my mother before driving to a nearby railroad where he waited for a train to take his life. Since then, I have been plagued with a vision of the train’s headlights—a magnificent bright light that dissolves the contours of everything in its path. I became a prisoner to this light that exists within my dark fantasy.

We rely on fleeting moments of significance to define life, but the majority of our lives are shaped by non-moments of transition, endurance, and dormancy. For this reason, I chose to create representations of less significant moments in order to build a body of work that can paint a better picture of reality. Luxurious portrayals of life as depicted in movies and pop culture cultivate dreams of becoming a character in a fantasy, but these dreams are quickly shattered by the constraints and circumstances of daily life. We become psychologically displaced and rejected by the fantasies that once served as our vitality. We begin to live in a state of purgatory, caught between reality and our dreams.

In The Divine Comedy, during the transition from the Inferno to Purgatory, Dante turns right to see the light from the east on Easter Sunday, a day of resurrection. With this new orientation, Dante’s purgatory becomes a place of hope, where lost souls can choose to repent or find redemption. The horses on my carousel face to the left, in the direction of the spiraling Inferno, but if the audience chooses to imagine the mechanism rotating, the horses will eventually turn right as they continue their clockwise journey. Similarly, as the halos, arches, circles, and light in my paintings become juxtaposed with the mundanity of the subjects, they transform those quiet non-moments into divinity, and the prisoners of my narratives are granted redemption.

This body of work began as a tragedy, but it has the potential to become a comedy. And just as I wish for my loved ones to see the beauty that is within their souls, I hope that my divine scenes of nothingness can become a vehicle for others to redeem themselves in purgatory and indulge in the beauty that is inherent in every life.

This exhibition closes 5/6/23.

 

NYC Art Shows- Mary Jones at High Noon Gallery

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Printmaking
Apr 212023
 

“Cocteau and Table”, 2023,oil on archival inkjet printed canvas

“The Seasons Between”, 2023, oil on archival inkjet printed canvas

High Noon Gallery is currently showing Les Problémes du Confort, an exhibition of work by Mary Jones.

From the press release-

Jones began this most recent body of work, collectively called simply, “Interior Design,” by painting Sumi ink over the black and white printed pages of a comprehensive French Interior Design publication from the 1960s. “[I chose the series’ title] not only to underscore the attributes of the original images, but to address their psychological component: the topos of dreams, so notably analyzed by Gaston Bachelard and James Hillman, spaces we conjure to discover the elements of our inner lives. Homes and interiors are not only spaces we remember, but also labyrinths of symbolism, familiar to all of us as emotionally charged experiences,” she explains.

The addition of her signature mark making started as an exercise to identify patterns in the tonal pages, separate from the context of the imagery. It seemed to act as a compositional barometer of sorts, deflecting the space in certain areas and illuminating it in others. The painted catalog images were then collaged, blown up, printed on canvas, and painted again, further conflating space and gesture, and inhabiting the vacant interiors with a visible energy. In doing so, Jones satisfies the principles of high design with the paintings’ harmonic beauty, and also the open systems of fine art by positioning the work as cultural critique that challenges the colonialist motifs that permeate the aesthetic sensibility of many of the spaces.

Jones’s work has long gnawed at the malleability of subject matter. She consistently uses legible imagery to anchor her abstractions, prodding at the fickle divide between the two modalities. Her sensitivity to painting’s illusionistic properties is connected to her experience as a faux painter, freelance work she’s done for 25 years. While the object of faux painting is to not let the artist’s hand show, Jones riffs on her craft by skillfully merging gesture and image in ways that are largely indistinguishable. She allows the marks to emulate form and object, playing on the viewer’s expectations of pictorial logic and slyly addressing the disparity between fine art and design, as for many decades— and especially during painting’s theoretical heyday in the second half of the 20th century— they shared a tenuous opposition. Design is associated with expense, and American society is perpetually transfixed by the Romantic notion of the artist as a working class hero.

Ionic Memories (2023), depicts a decadent room steeped in Roman busts and columns, the title a tongue-in-cheek reference to the science of memory and the unstable nature of artistic movements and empires alike. Jones echoes the velvety matte blacks of the printed image in her direct painting gestures, mixing a near perfect replica of the tone and texture for her to set up a meta tromp-l’oeil effect. In the foreground, a collaged brush stroke swipes away at the interior revealing a snowy landscape wherein a bush and modernist cabin are obscured by a swath of pink oil paint. In the context of the whole, the landscape reads as decorative forms within the room, such as fan coral and glass spheres. Other works such as Cocteau and Table (2023) make greater use of a fragmented effect wherein decisively multiversal looking forms cut through the composition like a glimpse into a parallel reality. Through a mix of painterly and faux elements, Jones takes care to merge her augmented realities just enough to allow the viewer to believe the image exists in one picture plane.

Perhaps to be comfortable is to momentarily resist time, to be temporarily impervious to the clamors for change. In Les Problémes du Confort, Jones reminds us that the arrangements we make with ourselves are transitory, constructed illusions to describe and reflect a sense of our place in the world we know, and that improvisational beauty can be found in transitions, in languages we don’t know, and in uncertainty.

This exhibition closes 4/23/23.

NYC Art Shows- Hew Locke at P.P.O.W.

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, British Art Shows, Collage, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Installation Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture
Mar 292023
 

Hew Locke, “Listening to the Land” room view

“The Relic”, 2022

“The Relic” 2022 (another side)

“Raw Materials 3”, 2022

“Raw Materials 3”, 2022 (detail)

“Raw Materials 3”, 2022 (detail)

“Jumbie House 2”, 2022

“Jumbie House 2”, 2022

For Hew Locke’s exhibition, Listening to the Land, at P.P.O.W. he has created intricate sculptures and paintings that are fascinating in person.

From the press release-

Locke is known for exploring the languages of colonial and post-colonial power, and the symbols through which different cultures assume and assert identity. Furthering the themes explored in his celebrated commission The Procession at Tate Britain, and his concurrent installation Gilt on the façade of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, this exhibit engages with contemporary and historical inequities while reflecting on the landscape and history of the Caribbean. The exhibition draws its title from a poem by Guyanese political activist and poet Martin Carter which situates itself between two opposing forces of the landscape – sea and forest. Locke’s show features new sculptures and wall works with recurring motifs of stilt-houses, boats, memento mori, and share certificates referencing tensions between the land, the sea, and economic power. Reflecting on these links, Locke notes, “The land was created to generate money for colonial power, now the sea wants it back.”

Translating to ‘land of many waters,’ Guyana and its physical, economic, and political landscape serve as one of the primary sources for Locke’s work. Having spent his childhood in this newly independent nation, the artist witnessed first-hand an era of radical transformation. Now, the country teeters on the precipice of an oil boom and is one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Juxtaposing personal meditations on the climate crisis with political commentary on the history of a globalized world, Locke contemplates the ways in which colonies were exploited to accumulate capital, and observes how Guyana’s economic future lies in the exploitation of its waters. Locke’s new boat sculptures The Relic and The Survivor embody this broad worldview as the two battered wrecks drift through time and history. Evoking the fragmented and diverse legacies of the global diaspora, the boats’ patchwork sails are interspersed with photo transfers of 19th Century cane cutters and banana boat loaders, while their decks are loaded with cargo that could allude to colonial plunder, trade goods or personal belongings.

Based on an abandoned plantation house, Locke’s newest sculpture Jumbie House 2 features layered images that unveil the spirits that haunt this colonial vestige. Presented alongside are a series of painted photographs of dilapidated vernacular architecture across Georgetown and rural Guyana. Constantly under threat of being washed away by storms or rising sea levels, these crumbling structures echo anxieties surrounding climate change and historical erasure. A new series of mixed media wall works, Raw Materials, is derived from antique share certificates and bonds. Locke richly decorates the appliques with acrylic, beads, and patchwork to draw attention to the complex ways in which the past shapes the present. The image of an 1898 Chinese Imperial Gold Loan behind painted Congolese figures connects the global economy at the height of Empire to current Sino-African trade networks. In another work, a painted representation of a Nigerian Ife mask, alongside an image of David Livingstone, is layered on a French-African Mortgage Bond from 1923, connecting exploration and exploitation of African land, to current conversations surrounding the repatriation of artifacts. Taken together, the works in Locke’s Listening to the Land echo William Faulkner’s adage “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

This exhibition closes 4/1/23.

The Procession, mentioned above, can now be seen at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, in Gateshead, England until June 11th, 2023.

Gilt, also mentioned above, is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art until May 30th, 2023.

 

NYC Art Shows- Erika Ranee at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Mar 222023
 

Erika Ranee, “Nacre”, 2023

Erika Ranee, “Nacre”, 2023 (detail)

Erika Ranee, “You Go First”, 2023

Erika Ranee, “You Go First”, 2023 (detail)

Erika Ranee, “You Go First”, 2023 (detail)

The paintings by Erika Ranee, part of her exhibition, All Natural at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, are densely constructed and require a closer look to truly appreciate the work it took to create the intense final products.

From the press release-

Ranee takes inspiration from the world all around her; a crosstown bus ride might reveal pops of color in a passenger’s bright blue IKEA bag seen against municipal orange plastic seats. A bucket of “Purple Dark” acrylic, discontinued by Guerra Paints but gifted to the artist, might bring to mind dahlias and peonies, her favorite flowers. All Natural refers to Ranee’s time spent between NYC and rural Western Massachusetts, and an ongoing fascination with both the fertile, natural world of the countryside and a – no-less fecund  – urbanized terrain shaped by its human inhabitants. The title also obliquely refers to drawings Ranee made of her niece’s braided hair extensions, some of which have been collaged into her paintings’ surfaces, fomenting another set of layered meaning to the works.

Ranee employs a wide variety of painting techniques to create her abstractions. Image and surface are developed through wide-ranging and multitudinous applications and removals of material in dense layers. Wide swaths of color are poured, allowing multi-directional deltas that show the influence of gravity and entropy. Lustrous, glossy paints sit under or beside bubbling and crackled powdery pigments on the canvas. Elements are collaged from sources including blacklight posters, coloring book pages, found children’s drawings and spray-stenciled botanical matter. In places, cut scraps of other paintings are glued onto her raucous surfaces then painted over, cut up, torn out and painted again. Some layers include ink drawings on newsprint shellacked or encased in gel mediums, then incised and peeled to reveal hidden forms underneath. Patterns resembling electric Lichtenberg formations are made through spray paint expelled directly into wet shellac. The result is a body of work that invites us to look closely, examine details, and wonder at its making, all while reveling in the lush colors and forms that ebb and flow before us.

This exhibition closes 3/25/23.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries