Margie Schaffer Steinmann, Leslie Shaw Zadoian, Grace Baskt Wapner and Vicki Khuzami Exhibition
Carter Burden Gallery
This event has ended.
Carter Burden Gallery presents three new exhibitions: Memories and Miracles in the East Gallery featuring Margie Schaffer Steinmann and Leslie Shaw Zadoian; Head, Heart, Hand in the West gallery featuring Grace Baskt Wapner; and On the Wall featuring Vicki Khuzami.
Vicki Khuzami explores the theme of obsessive collecting in her installation I am the Octopus in Carter Burden Gallery’s On the Wall public space. The two 8-foot long paintings span opposite walls, each an expanse of sea green depicting giant tentacles wrapping around a dollhouse it has discovered at the bottom of the ocean. A life long collector the artist identifies with the Cephalopoda since it too amasses treasured objects to bring back to its den. Khuzami describes, “With its eight arms and huge eyes, the octopus glides through the waters touching and feeling everything it comes upon while it searches and hunts… The octopus is highly curious and endlessly wonders about the properties of the objects it comes across, how it can be used and enhance its life.Therefore, the Octopus and I are one.”
In Memories and Miracles, Margie Schaffer Steinmann presents mixed media paintings that address the artist’s process. Her compositions often evoke imaginary ruins of her native city that are reborn through refined assembly of color, line, and form. Steinmann states, “I approach each piece in conflict between intuition and intention but my passion and commitment give me the courage, insight and trust to create a sublime discord of classical abstraction. A painting that begs questions, not answers. A painting that is life affirming. An invitation to you the viewer to open a different door and find something that was there all along.” One hundred years ago, on October 17, 1919, Steinmann’s father was born; she dedicates this show to him, her biggest fan.
In Head, Heart, Hand, Grace Bakst Wapner presents recent paintings with rich palettes that appear subdued and calm on her distinctive surfaces of unstretched jute, canvas, and buckram. This use of a variety of materials, combined painting, hand stitching and machine sewing asserts and celebrates the inextricable harmony of the head, heart, and hand. The work concerns disparity and connection, color and texture, diversity and unity, form and the distillation of form. Wapner explains, “All my life while working I have believed “decoration is the art sin”. All my life I have loved the decorative. This work is the struggle to reconcile the two by honoring the one without compromising the other.”
In Memories and Miracles, Leslie Shaw Zadoian presents abstract works entitled Refugees and Crossing Borders. The two works featured are from a series entitled Upheaval, which represents the tragedies brought on by conflict. Zadoian begins her practice with formal aesthetic elements: shapes, lines, color, texture, and space. She finds beauty and formal elegance in unlikely combinations. Equally important to the artist are textures, energy and space, which are sensed rather than seen. Zadoian states, “Inspired by nature, art, the world of manufactured and discarded objects, and the inner journey, my artworks transform disparate elements and integrate them into a new universe.”
Media
Schedule
from October 17, 2019 to November 13, 2019
Opening Reception on 2019-10-17 from 18:00 to 20:00