NYAB Event - "Things Are Not What They Seem" Exhibition

"Things Are Not What They Seem" Exhibition

J. Cacciola Gallery

This event has ended.

Things Are Not What They Seem is a revival of the symbolic in representational painting. Through the juxtaposition of objects, gesture and material these artists create poetic imagery that explores human reverie, desire and personal struggle.

Scott Fraser is noted for works in which the ordinary becomes much more than its physical presence. At once technically refined and imbued with an irrepressible wit, Fraser has a unique ability to discover the remarkable hidden within everyday objects. Widely recognized as one of the premier representational painters at work today, his work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Arnot Museum, and the Denver Art Museum among others.

Daina Mattis takes great pleasure in art’s elusive qualities, and takes every opportunity to amplify them within her work. An enthusiast of paper, she creates figures that occupy the paper’s surface yet appear isolated, consumed in their own habits, somehow removed from each other. Often choosing subjects that make reference to childhood, her work points to a childlike sensibility mediated by the unavoidable exigencies of adulthood. Daina has exhibited internationally. She currently resides in Syracuse, NY.

Von Sumner presents a curious cast of characters, engrossed in inexplicable activities that seem vital to the characters themselves. The people that inhabit Sumner’s work appear, on one level, utterly ordinary and are made all the more remarkable for their bizarre, ritual-like gestures, and odd accoutrement. There is at once a playful quality in these works and an inescapable sense of unease. Sumner has exhibited widely including exhibitions at the Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco, Bert green Fine Art, Los Angeles and the Phillips Museum, and Franklin and Marshall College among others.

[Image: Scott Fraser "Kiss of the Golden Mean II" oil on board, 25.5x34 in.]