“The Call of Walls” Exhibition

“The Call of Walls” Exhibition

Van Der Plas Gallery

This event has ended.

In this group show, we’re continuing our tradition of exhibiting new work by artists we already love alongside surprising entries by artists who are entirely new to us.

The Call of Walls group show is attracting a new generation of viewers. Our October 2018 “Kunstfest” was a great success, bringing in more than 200 people to the opening reception. 85 works from 45 artists prompted a reaction from collectors, people in the industry, and artists themselves.

Call of Walls presents riveting eccentricities. Calling himself “a square man in an otherwise round world,” Bill Green presents white-on-black scratchboard-style drawings that corrupt the usual platitudes about the desert and cowboy tradition. Rahza Dezmen, insisting that the line between beauty and ugliness is blurry, throws up the topic of painting as a kind of challenge in which thickly-brushed shapes seem to fight each other, with no certain winner. Yorgos Giotsas’s “Democracy is quite uncertain, it looks like a burning flag” is a mixed-media collage that seems to be a comment on a disaster that has just completed itself. Reuben Gordon, having made the tantalizing promise that “my work concerns what it means to be alone,” shows in his “Infielders” painting that even baseball has pathos in the right hands.

Leonardo Lanzolla’s “Creature Tower Spiritual Impulse” is a tiny powerhouse of a painting depicting a truncated, catlike being that seems to have ingested at least one human soul. This idea harmonizes nicely with the tilted world of Suzan Lizotte’s “Capitol Building,” which might be a comment on the topsy-turvy form of government that now assails Washington. Anna Magtoto’s seething “Vulnerability Becomes You,” Elizabeth Mead’s “Exit 10 Williamsburg,” and Mauricio Paz Viola’s “Identity Series #5” all contribute to the sensation that we have found an underground source for rebellious and intimate new work. Finally, Jason Maclean’s drawings evoke both Saul Steinberg and Keith Haring in one breath.

Fred Gutzeit has made frequent appearances at the gallery, drawing from his large and rapidly-changing body of work. Here he depicts the motion of ephemeral forces—the flow of water, the movement of a hand as it writes—in complex, large-format paintings that prove that delicacy and identity are connected.

Media

• Painting
• Drawing
• Prints

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