Stephen Pentak "Vertical Landscapes"

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts

poster for Stephen Pentak "Vertical Landscapes"

This event has ended.

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts presents the fifth solo exhibition of painter Stephen Pentak titled, Vertical Landscapes. A colleague of Mr. Pentak's once told him that his "paintings could be cut or divided and each section would be a painting." Six of the new paintings, in which the vertical is emphasized, are excerpts from previous compositions; landscapes abstracted from landscapes wherein the elements are repositioned.

The titled of the exhibition, Vertical Landscapes, is a subtle juxtaposition of meaning; landscapes are often horizontal and thought of as an assertion of the horizon, whereas figures stand upright and suggest verticality by contrast. The verbal play suits the painter's work with these paintings to "explore the ideas of 'repositioning'". The shore line and the tree trunks, the latitude and the longitude, provide a loose grid superfluous to direction. The shoreline is a threshold slicing but not solving the ambiguity between hills and their reflections. The tree's midsection, no top no bottom, stand at the fore, solid and fixed, providing only depth. The viewer moves left, right, in and out to step between leaf and stroke, gesture and image. The rough structure of plumb and parallel, vertical vs. horizontal, draw us to experience the relationships between color and brush. The ambiguities loosen us from the determinates of a landscape and bring us to the paint and the painter and the result, the painting.

Media

Schedule

from November 19, 2009 to December 23, 2009

Opening Reception on 2009-11-19 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Stephen Pentak

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