Wednesday to Saturday 11AM to 6PM
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PAST EXHIBITION
Unpainted – Recent Abstract Painting
June 13, 2008—August 2, 2008
Press Release
Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Unpainted – Recent
Abstract Painting - June 13 through August 2, 2008. There will be an
opening reception Friday June 13, 6-9pm. Participating artists include
Patrick Berran, Laura Fayer, Callum Innes, Bob Jones, Jim Lee,
Stephanie Serpick, and Don Voisine.
Each artist in this group exhibition proves that abstract painting can
continue to provide a vital and necessary voice, visually,
conceptually, and aesthetically. Expanding boundaries and defining what
a painting can be, the artists reveal that beauty, purity of concept,
design, intelligence, and visually compelling treatment of the medium
have much to offer in the present.
Patrick Berran is based in New York. A recent graduate of Hunter
College’s MFA program, Berran’s paintings are a chivalrous blend of
Turner-esque light, romance, and an alchemical hand that deftly guides
the viewer away from his illogical material process. Under Berran’s
control, properties of paint disobey their natural laws and are seduced
into slowly revealing new possibilities of surface, color, and form.
Berran will have a solo exhibition in the gallery in September.
New York based Laura Fayer incorporates a process of hand-made stamps,
stencils, and rice paper to create canvases that meditate on forms
found in the natural and built environment, aerial view landscape, and
an imperfect Asian aesthetic. Fayer’s layering process reveals the
history of individual works and completeness through an additive
accumulation, rather than one of excavation, decay, and erosion.
Scottish painter Callum Innes has achieved significant recognition
worldwide for his conceptually driven unpainted canvases. Seemingly
monochromatic colors are applied and subsequently unpainted with washes
of turpentine. The unpainting process, when arrested, reveals a frozen
moment where past, present and future coexist on the picture plane,
leaving the hidden properties of paint exposed.
Milwaukee artist Bob Jones creates wholly nonfunctional objects from
the detritus of a studio in disarray. The accumulation of discarded
materials and energy, and what can be called the kidnapping or removal
of the objects from that environment, yields magnetically charged and
confounding works once contextualized within an art viewing setting.
The painting/sculptural hybrids of New York based Jim Lee are a quirky
and intelligent blend of folk-minimalism. Carefully constructed, witty,
charming, with references to Tuttle, Kelly, Ryman, and the Arte Povera
movement, Lee’s work achieves an unusual blend of awkward poise.
Chicago based Stephanie Serpick subtly combines the faintest hints of
Victorian patterns, quasi-Gothic lettering, and tattoo design to create
atmospheric paintings. They explore memory and its gravity, as it
separates from and fragments the present.
The hard-edged reductive paintings of New York based Don Voisine are
elegantly unpretentious and rigorous in their paint handling. Voisine’s
colors and surfaces vary from glossy to matte, and transparent to
opaque. With a humble disposition, they whisper assured wisdom. |
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