“Essence/Quintessence” Exhibition
Stephen Haller Gallery
This event has ended.
Stephen Haller Gallery presents Essence/Quintessence, a group exhibition presenting new and seminal historic works characterizing the distinct aesthetic of the gallery’s core group of international artists.
In Essence/Quintessence the essential core of these artists’ vision is revealed. Using a variety of approaches: painting, collage, sculpture, photography, these artists create works emerging from an appreciation of the artistic past, yet distinctly forward looking. A painterly tactile quality characterizes much of the work, sensuous surfaces – even the photography-based works exhibit a painterly quality.
The exhibition includes key paintings by the late artist Larry Zox whose work is represented in such collections such as MoMA, TATE, the Hirshhorn, the Whitney, and the Guggenheim Museum. Young photographer Kate O’Donovan Cook’s work is a fresh new approach to studies of identity – the Washington DC press hailed her work in a recent exhibition on contemporary photography at the Corcoran Gallery. Italian born sculptor Bruno Romeda utilizes simple shapes, but complex surfaces, always with an awareness of the human hand - the tactility of the artistic impulse in his work. Johnnie Winona Ross creates minimalist yet radiant meditative paintings.
The works on view also include Guggenheim Award-winning artist Linda Stojak’s continuing exploration of identity in paintings characterized as “psychological self-portraits.” Nobu Fukui’s collage based works are “part Pop Art, part potpourri…” writes Benjamin Genocchio in the New York Times. Lloyd Martin engages the architectural environment through pure color. Michel Alexis deals with the iconography of language in collage paintings. Superb colorist Ronnie Landfield is represented by a major work. And photography-based artist Sam Jury “weaves a contemporary web of illusion and wonder into scenarios of her own design,” writes Michael Rush, Director of the Broad Art Museum/MSU.
Although primarily abstract, one is able to perceive in these artists’ works some reference to lived experience: to architecture, nature, artifice, language/calligraphy, form, imagery, personal identity - never simply rote precision, but intensely human expression. Their engagement with lived experience creates a common ground, the shared essence of their artistic experience.
Media
Schedule
from July 18, 2013 to September 28, 2013
Artist(s)
Larry Zox, Kate O’Donovan Cook, Bruno Romeda, Johnnie Winona Ross, Linda Stojak, Nobu Fukui et al.