"Letters Not About Love" Exhibition

Regina Rex

poster for "Letters Not About Love" Exhibition

This event has ended.

“You are the city I live in; you are the name of the month and the day.”

Victor Shklovsky, a Russian poet living in exile in Berlin, fell in love with Alya. He wrote her numerous letters per day; the single constraint she imposed was that he must not write about love. He wrote about mourning, nationhood, exile, dreams, his wardrobe, history, banal activities but never about love. The predetermined constraint-- the forbidden subject of these letters-- is the very core that holds them together and binds them into a narrative. Even as the unspoken subject permeates each word, it is the absence of the said, the not-saying, that makes a cohesive statement. It is the purposeful avoidance that leads to directness.

Nancy Haynes explores the nature of space and light in non-representational painting. She creates hologram-like fields of color, light to dark (or dark to light), in a range that is at times almost imperceptible and monochromatic. The work is pregnant with what is unseen, unsaid, concealed but implied. Nancy speaks about the “presence of an absence.” The spectre of a subject never seen is always hovering at the edge. Her reductive thinking about painting gets to an essential definition, without all the adjectives.

EJ Hauser operates in multiple modes of painting unified by a poetic suspense. Phrase paintings such as “Staggering loans” and “Cock A Doodle Doo” and portraits of Walt Whitman in quick, ghostly lines purposefully leave the viewer to discern what is not there. Identity, history, awe of the written word, the passion for looking: all of these notions are present in this rich and broad painting practice Hauser has cultivated. Hinting, suggesting, and insinuating, the paintings invite us to visit with them many times. Staying with them and letting them whisper, the viewer is taken to depths of the poetic.

Sarah Peters’s bronze portraits depict American outcasts, idealists, extremists, zealots, and visionaries. From early colonists to late 20th century religious cults, these are the believers who blindly follow conviction to extreme ends. Her heads, familiar from history but slightly strange, warp our expectations of traditional bronze busts. They are vessels for narrative, but it’s left to the viewer to fill in the story. They are magnificent symbols heavy with implications, charged with touch and process, yet silent with hollow holes for eyes. Again it is the absent element that is most present, and through the absence we are invited to see.

EJ HAUSER
Brooklyn-based artist EJ Hauser received her MFA from UNC Chapel Hill in 1998 and has been living and working in NY since. Her paintings have been included in group shows in New York at Storefront Gallery, Ed Thorpe Gallery, Kathleen Cullen, and Participant Inc. Solo exhibitions include pinetarstarchart at Neverwork Gallery, New York NY, in 2008, and Perfecto, at LUMP gallery, Raleigh NC in 2011. Recently, her work was included in Party at Phong’s at Janet Kurnatowski Gallery in Greenpoint, SNOWCLONES at artblogartblog in Chelsea, The Working Title curated by KCLOG at The Bronx River Art Center and Special Blend, curated by Chris Martin at The Journal Gallery in Williamsburg.

NANCY HAYNES
Nancy Haynes was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1947. She lives and works in Red Hook, Brooklyn and the Huerfano Valley, Colorado. An extensive exhibition history beginning in 1983 includes solo shows at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, NY, 2009; Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna, 2006; Galerie von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland, 1998; and John Good Gallery, New York, NY, 1991. Nancy’s work is included in many public collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery of Art, UCLA Hammer Museum, Yale Museum of Art, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Honors and awards include grants from the Pollock- Krasner Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.

SARAH PETERS
Sarah Peters received an MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University in 2003 and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, The Paris Review Daily, ArtSlant, and The Atlantic Daily Dish and recognized by a number of grants and residencies, including a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, The Fine Arts Work Center, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program and the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Residency. Sarah has recently shown her work in solo exhibitions at Winkleman Gallery, New York, NY, artSTRAND Gallery, Provincetown, MA, and The Front Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

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Schedule

from June 09, 2012 to July 15, 2012

Closing Reception on 2012-07-14 from 18:00 to 20:00
Poetry reading and closing BBQ

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