A First Look. And a Last Chance (With Party).

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Three by me at DM Contemporary/Manhattan: From top, Silk Road 127, 128 and 129, 2009, each encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches

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A First View . . .

DM Contemporary, a gallery in Mill Neck, Long Island, where I am represented, has opened a private viewing space in Manhattan. The new space is located in suddenly chic lower Park Avenue (the Gansevoort Park Hotel will open across the street in a few months). Owner Doris Mukabaa moved in the art before any of the furniture, so the opening on Sunday afternoon offered an all-eyes-on-the-art installation with natural light and a few strategically placed incandescents.

The exhibition is open by appointment through Saturday. Call the gallery at 516-922-3552 if you'd like to see the show. Here, let me take you on a little tour:

The little image above will take you from my work, top, to a panoramic view of the installation, below

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From far left: In the main gallery, two by Nancy Manter, Chattermarks #1 and Drift #4, both distemper and collage on aluminum; David Headley, Orchid #1, acrylic on canvas

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In the east gallery, still above; Carole Freyz Gutierrez, Layers 10, acrylic on canvas; Linda Cummings, archivial digital photographic prints (on either side of door). Hovering and Reverie; Luis Castro untitled sculpture (on pedestal), framed work by Frances Richardson

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Continuing the panorama: Headley; two small spolvero drawings from the Concentric Shape Series by Mary Judge; Karen Margolis drawing and Luis Castro sculpture (shown full view below); Frances Richardson; Lita Kelmenson sculpture (barely visible) in doorway, Barbara Andrus sculpture, Soft Box; Louise P. Sloane, Orange Orange Cobalt Teal, acrylic polymers and paint on aluminum

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Two spolvero drawings by Mary Judge, visible by the lamp pole above

Karen Margolis, Indeterminate, cut-and-stitched abaca; Luis Castro wood sculpture, Untitled

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Facing the main gallery and east gallery from entry: Jackie Battenfield Frail Strings, acrylic on canvas, foreground; Nancy Manter and David Headly paintings in foreshortened view; Mary Judge drawings; Louise P. Sloane painting

A closer look at Nancy Manter's Chattermarks #1, with a view in the opposite direction

Above, from left: Karen Schiff, Untitled (Triptych), acrylic and mixed media; Isabel Bigelow, Tree-Blue, oil on panel; Jerry Marksohn, City with a Sole, archival digital photograph

Below, we'll turn left at the Bigelow painting to enter the west gallery. In foreground, Eung Ho Park, I'm Looking at You-Prickly Gaze 1, mixed media on bottle caps on panel

From left: Babe Shapiro, Spring and All, string and acrylic on board; Tamiko Kawata Sculpture for Corner, rubber bands, acrylic on tube; White Silence and Echo and White Water Reflection, both rubber bands, acrylic on canvas

Below: Tomomi Ono, Milky Way, monoprint lithograph, mixed media
Most work shown is from 2009

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. . . And a Last Chance

Slippery When Wet, on view at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn since mid- September, will close this Sunday, November 22. Eighteen of my Silk Road paintings, all with an aqueous palette, are part of the show. A larger work, Vicolo, is on view in the upstairs mezzanine. I wrote about the show here and here but go see it for yourself. Work is by Suzan Batu, Susan Homer, Nancy Manter, Andrew Mockler, Don Muchow, Peter Schroth and myself.

In a party mood? A Brooklyn-wide gallery hop will take place that weekend. Metaphor is planning a final reception party on Sunday. The gallery's Open House Reception will be from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. (though the gallery will open at noon).

"We will have refreshments and thought it would be a good day for the artists to invite friends," says gallery director Rene Lynch. So...consider yourself invited. I should be there around 4:00. Hope to see you!

Joanne Mattera: Installation view of 18 Silk Road paintings, each encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches
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The L'eau Down: Installation Shots from "Slippery When Wet"

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I'll have paparazzi pics on Friday, but I wanted to show you installation shots of Slippery When Wet at Metaphor Contemporary Art, in which I have work. Obviously I can't review the show, but I can describe and discuss it--a diverse thematic show in which water asserts itself abstractly and representationally, in color and in black and white.

View from the front door: Foreground, Andrew Mockler, Untitled, 72 x 49 inches; three paintings from the Ocean series by Peter Schroth, each oil on paper mounted on canvas, 28 x 28 inches; two framed photographs from the Water Studies series by Don Muchow, archival inkjet prints; a grid of 18 of my Silk Road paintings, most 2009, all encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches

The images, courtesy of the gallery, begin at the front entrance and sweep around clockwise. Let me say that I love Andrew Mockler's paintings, beautiful canvases that compress a thousand sunrises and sunsets into coolly formal compositions of horizontal stripes. You can see a large one, above, which is just to your left as you enter the gallery. (The gallery itself, a beautiful white cube with an enormous glass-front overhead door, must have started life as a garage. It would be completely at home on 24th Street next door to Gagosian or Mary Boone.)

Continuing around: Schroth, Muchow, Mattera

Peter Schroth and Don Muchow-- painter and photographer, above--have much in common with their water studies. Each captures the movement of the ocean. Schroth, working in oil on paper en plein air, depicts its turbulence, while Muchow, working in black and white photography, finds the moment between ebb and flow--like the still point after an exhalation.

My grid of Silk Road paintings, each 12x12, encaustic on panel

When Julian Jackson and Rene Lynch, the owner/directors of Metaphor, invited me to participate with an installation of Silk Road paintings, I allowed the aqueous theme to flow into my consciousness. The result are the paintings you see above, which are more atmospheric, more referential to the ocean than I would normally have done. I loved having the opportunity to stretch in this way. There are ridges suggestive of waves, and graduated color suggestive of horizons. I haven't become a seascape painter, of course. I retain my minimalist sensibility. But let's call it "minimalist with benefits." (You can see some individual works here.)

Suzan Batu, Slurpee, oil on canvas, 72 x 72 inches; Susan Homer, Rainy Day Painting, oil on canvas, 55 x 48 inches. Batu's work is all about the flow, while Homer's have a quiet lyricism inspired by the garden on a rainy day


Andrew Mockler's four gouache-on-paper studies are shown over the desk, above, and on their own, below

Climb the winding staircase in the back corner of the gallery and you reach a narrow second level. Normally it's a project space, but for this show it holds a continuation of the show. I have a larger work up here. Muchow and Mockler also have work. Nancy Manter has photographs as well. Manter's work is in the street-level window of the gallery, and that will be the first image you see in the paparazzi post on Friday, but for here, take a peek at this loge-like space. Below it is a closer view of one of Manter's works.

My Vicolo 53, 2008, carved encaustic on panel, 36 x 36 inches; two by Don Muchow; two by Nancy Manter; Andrew Mockler painting on far wall

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Below, Nancy Manter, Windowpane #2, digital photograph

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A Great Opening on Friday! Pics Coming Soon . . .

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Slippery When Wet, a group show of painting and photography that expresses and references water, has opened at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn.

I'm one of seven artists (Suzan Batu, Susan Homer, Nancy Manter, Andrew Mockler, Don Muchow, Peter Schroth) in the show, which is curated by Julian Jackson and Rene Lynch.
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Soon, soon, soon I'll post pics of the show and from the opening. Meanwhile, click here for the Metaphor website; here for a peek at some of my paintings.

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Stayin' Alive: The Auction at Metaphor

The installation clockwise from the front door. Here there are works by Stephanie Brody Lederman, Tim McDowell, Mary Judge, Cecile Chong, Julie Gross and others

The pictures you see here are from the Stayin' Alive auction at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn. The auction, which benefits the exhibition program at the gallery during these hardscrabble economic times, features the work of many artists who have been involved with the gallery.

First, a disclaimer: I've donated work to the show.
(While I'm not generally a fan of donating art--too many artists get tapped far too often--I am a believer in supporting a few events and causes. This is one of them.)

Second, a comment: I want them all!
OK, so that's not going to happen, but I have been bidding, and so have others. As I understand it--and the auction site will explain it better than I, after the online bidding closes, there will be a live auction on Tuesday night, at which time--I think--work will be taken home by the lucky winning bidders.

I talked about this project a month ago in the context of other galleries that have come up with interesting, and often interactive, ways to keep their doors open. The installation pictures you see here are shown clockwise from the front door, starting from the image above that opens the post.

Tell me: is this not a fabulous installation? Artists are identified on the auction website. Here there are works by Loren Munk, Matthew Deleget, Julian Jackson (a co-owner of the gallery, with Rene Lynch), and Gabriele Evertz. Can you find my small square red painting in the picture above?

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As we swing around visually, the wall with the blue and green work, below, faces you as you walk in. Here there are works by Rene Lynch, Ward Jackson, Margaret Neill and Gabe Brown

Continuing around, we come to the black and white wall with works by, among others, Kate Beck and Marietta Hoferer. OK, so I'm noting all the artists whose work I want
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Two views of the Project Space up on the mezzanine. Above, tooking toward the front of the gallery. Below, looking in the opposite direction

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Awash in Color: Spectrum at Metaphor Contemporary

 

At Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, Julie Gross (window) and Gabriele Evertz (back wall) pull you in

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A range of visual themes, linked by the use of color, is on exhibition at this show at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn. The full title of the show is Spectrum: Four Painters Cover the Spectrum of Style and Color, and the announcement card on the door shows you that range. I am, of course, partial to Gabriele Evertz and Julie Gross, whose color is carried by geometry--or is it the other way around?

Evertz's optically charged paintings, large or small, are rigorous in their execution--technically perfect lines that set up retinal tension as the adjacent colors fight for assertion. The nearly wall-size work at the rear of the gallery was created specifically for this exhibition. Up close, the broad expanse of shimmering, vibrating color calls to you; you could fall into it, like Alice down the rabbit hole. Indeed, allowing yourself to do so--at least optically--results in a pleasant sense of spatial disorientation. From a distance the vibrational tension is muted so that the work exists as a shimmering color field.
Gross's work, with its oozy bubbles and droplets, is as sensuous as Evertz's is austere. The optical agitation in these paintings makes the elements appear to be moving. Are they pushing and squeezing one another or does it just appeat that way? Gross knows her color theory; hop on to see where it takes you.
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The four artists in Spectrum: Evertz, Margaret Neill, Gross and Elizabeth Terhune

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Gabriele Evertz. Four Reds and Ice Blues, acrylic on canvas, on the back wall; an installaton of smaller paintings in the foreground.

In the middle ground, paintings by Margaret Neill. This image from the gallery website
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A view from the mezzanine, above: That's Evertz in the bottom center of the frame. A painting by Margaret Neill is at left

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On the mezzanine, below: Four paintings on vellum by Julie Gross with paintings by Elizabeth Terhune and Neill in the distance. This image from the gallery website

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.Metaphor Contemporary Art is owned and run by two painters, Rene Lynch and Julian Jackson, whose passion for painting and painters is an almost palpable element of the gallery. The gallery itself is a dramatic high-ceilinged white box that opens onto Atlantic Avenue. If you haven't been there yet, go. Directions are on the gallery website. It's open on Sundays. And there's going to be an artists' talk on June 1, the last day of the show..

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