Thurston Belmer and Magdalena Firląg “The Compounding Edge”

Salomon Arts Gallery

poster for Thurston Belmer and Magdalena Firląg “The Compounding Edge”

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NaeraArts and the Salomon Arts Gallery is pleased to announce The Compounding Edge, a two-artist exhibition featuring E. Thurston Belmer and Magdalena Firlag.

Curated by Naera Kim, marking the first collaboration between the Salomon Arts Gallery and an outside agent, The Compounding Edge places the monumental art of E. Thurston Belmer and Magdalena Firlag in conversation, allowing for a thought-provoking visual contrast and clash. The exhibition presents two artists who, despite their differences, both use traditional artistic techniques in order to represent and, at times, critique contemporary society. Combining the weight of their many art historical references with an unmistakably modern edge, Firlag and Belmer’s works appear almost timeless, maintaining a classical devotion to rigorous artistic production.

With his large-scale paintings such as Still Life and Bone and Blood, E. Thurston Belmer’s darkly melancholy and exquisitely beautiful works reveal his deep reverence for the traditions of oil painting and skilled draftsmanship. With references ranging from Caravaggio to Jacques-Louis David, Belmer’s art emerges as a thoroughly raw, almost punk take on Neoclassicism. Not only technically striking, Belmer’s disturbing yet engrossing works are filled with complex symbolism, investigating powerful themes from eroticism to the thin boundary between life and death.

Like Belmer, Magdalena Firląg also works in highly traditional artistic mediums from mosaic-making to fresco-painting. In enormous mosaic works of currency like The Great Glass, Firlag employs reused glass from recycled bottles not only as her chosen materials but also, as a symbol for the circulation of capital and our troubled relation to economic systems. Drawing on the legacy of Byzantine murals and the mosaics of Pompeii, Firlag’s highly skilled and challenging art displays her incisive social commentary though unexpected mediums.

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Schedule

from October 15, 2014 to November 07, 2014
Mon-Tue (only by appointment)) / Wed-Fri 2-6PM / Sat 3-6PM

Opening Reception on 2014-10-15 from 19:00 to 21:00

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