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1.13.2010

Closing out the Year: Sharon Horvath

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Though I’ll slip in some current reporting, I'm using this month to look back at exhibitions I loved but didn’t get a chance to write about as Miami was looming. Sharon Horvath’s Parts of a World at Lori Bookstein Fine Art was one of those exhibitions.

The painting just inside the front door--my favorite in the show-- with the full work below and a detail below that


At first her paintings look like pure abstraction—woozy grids, trusslike mazes, and a netlike celestial space, all dense with layers of marks and dots. I respond to these paintings emotionally first, formally only after the sensation of them settles in. Closer looking reveals that these are depictions, however attenuated, of places: paths, topographies, pools of light that turnout to be ballparks, of all things. Up close you get pulled in. I’ve included details. There are worlds within her worlds.
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Entering the gallery proper, with a closer view below of the painting on the back wall, and a detail below that


I have no title for this work, but I love it and the detail:
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Swinging around to the right: Afterlife, 2002-2009, dispersed pigment, polymer and collage on canvas, left
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The work for which I have no title, right, is shown in detail below
The layers are topographical and transparent, taking you deep with the visual structure of the painting
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Viewing Horvath's work gives you an opportunity to float above it, to float within it, to peek into and behind space. Clearly she achieved what she set out to do. This is part of her statement from the press release: “I’d like you to see a place as if you are hovering far above it, and at the same time digging in the ground. You are large, then you are small. When you are small you can enter into things. When you are large you can see more.”
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Foreground, Your Blue Loom, for Martin Ramirez, 2001, disperse pigment, ink and polymer on paper on canvas
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Detail below
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A peek into the smaller back gallery. The largest painting, July Mountain, was noted here previously
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By the way, those layers have a neat complement in real life: Horvath’s first solo show with the gallery took place in the gallery’s first show in its new locatioion, on 10th Avenue near 19th Street. Another neat complement: Here’s what I saw when I walked out and looked back at the gallery from across 10th Avenue:

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11 comments:

Susan Roux said...

Thanks for the exhibition tour! Love the ending...

nevin said...

awesome..

Lori Buff said...

Great examples of layering and how layering can bring life to a work. I love the picture at the end too; it's a perfect example and reminder that we can find so much around us that can influence our art.

Nancy Natale said...

Thanks for posting this, Joanne. I love it. It must have been great in person. What a beautiful show! It deserved the full JM treatment.

lisa said...

Inspiring work. Thanks for the introduction.

Anonymous said...

amazing and thanks for sharing

Kathleen Loomis said...

Just yesterday I read the review of Horvath's show in "Art in America" and it's great to be able to see several images instead of just one. Her work is gorgeous. thanks for showing it to us

YHBHS said...

what a crazy beautiful show!

some of those paintings remind me of hiroshi sugito. his paintings need to be seen in person, but they are so magical...


http://www.marcfoxx.com/artist/view/1438

love your blog joanne!

anne mcgovern said...

Amazing work! Wish I had seen it in person. Thanks again for sharing.

Karen Schifano said...

I feel like an idiot for missing this, but thank you so much for the extensive coverage - I get to see something of what she's up to. Got to a lecture of hers up in Provincetown maybe a year ago, and it was wonderful, smart, unpretentious talk.
The real deal...

Unknown said...

Thank you for sharing this with us. I love the work.