Michael Beck, Steve Hicks & Paul Rousso Exhibition

George Billis Gallery

poster for Michael Beck, Steve Hicks & Paul Rousso Exhibition

This event has ended.

MICHAEL BECK

As a Photorealist I tend to view painting as journalistic: attempting to report what is seen precisely and accurately. The objects I paint are chosen for their sense of use and wear. They display an inherent biography or story. Typically the items are obsolete, outdated remnants of our culture that in their heyday were heralded as desirable. By placing them on a stage, brightly lit, I am putting them back in the spotlight to be examined, questioned and judged. They are once again a celebrity given a second chance to take the owner/viewer on a journey. The work invites viewers to conjure up narratives, even fantasies, of their own design, and the starting point is likely to be a shared memory of childhood or and idealized version of Americana. But the imagery calls for a deeper exploration of its meaning because by isolating the object it becomes decontextualized; asking the viewer to consider it as a thing of curiosity on its own. Many times viewers’ stories will bring new insight about what an object is and how it can be seen. I give the objects drama and fresh animation through the use of light, shadow, and color. Those features are what the work is truly about. On the canvas is a record of the decisions that led to the creation of the image. My hope is that the viewer is brought down into the landscape of color and application that I experienced while producing the piece.


STEVE HICKS

In this series of oil and acrylic paintings Hicks moves from a literal to a more metaphorical documentation of architectural space. Taking cues from Mondrian, Klein, Pollock and Ryman, Hicks uses a fundamental grammar of line and plane to generate a painting language that leads to unexpected conclusions. Throughout the process his restricted syntax gives way to more expansive possibilities that cultivate oppositions between gesture and geometry, as well as intention and accident.

The work draws from both Hicks’s former architectural study and practice as well as to his even earlier, exposure to Sumi-e painting. While the more intuitive brushwork begins to describe patterns of energy, the shifting planes mimic the architectural form of our built environment. Traces of line and plane become the equivalents of doubt, memory and time. The whole evokes an evolving abstract narrative while the best results seem at once surprising and obvious.


PAUL ROUSSO

My work explores the relationship between the two-dimensional politics of the printed page and the multimedia promise of future-enhanced life experiences. Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by the endless oscillation of the human condition through text and imagery.

As these shifting forms become distorted through the lens of history, my work inscribes an epitaph to the printed reality that was our past existence. These subtle forms become distorted through rejection of the academic needs of light and shadow while attempting to focus insight into the darkness of our future. Exploring the relationship between the history of mass didactic knowledge and complex emotional visual memories, these new combinations are created from both orderly conscious and random unconscious narratives. These narratives define the ephemeral nature of the moment, which start out as a vision of the everyday and soon become manipulated into a tragedy of greed, leaving only a sense of nihilism and the dawn of a new synthesis.

As intermittent derivatives become transformed through boundaried and critical practice, the viewer is left with an insight into the possibilities of our condition, which define our relationship between the universality of myth through the nostalgia of the ubiquitous printed word and the new national pastime of digital tourism.

Media

Schedule

from January 26, 2016 to February 27, 2016

Opening Reception on 2016-01-28 from 18:00 to 20:00

  • Facebook

    Reviews

    All content on this site is © their respective owner(s).
    New York Art Beat (2008) - About - Contact - Privacy - Terms of Use