“What’s the Point of Precision?” Exhibition

“What’s the Point of Precision?” Exhibition

Ortega y Gasset Projects @ The Old American Can Factory

This event has ended.

Ortega y Gasset Projects presents What’s the Point of Precision?, a group exhibition curated by OyG Co-Director Eric Hibit. What’s the Point of Precision? includes work by Nathan Ethier, Jim Gaylord, Evan Halter, Rachel Hellerich, Sanou Oumar, Mark Sengbusch, Kelli Thompson, Ann Toebbe, Jonathan Wahl, and Richard Whitten.

What’s the Point of Precision? takes inspiration from Precisionism, an early 20th century American art movement characterized by hard edges and exacting measurements. The Precisionists’ painterly style expressed how they saw American culture of their day: a landscape of industrial architecture and machine-made form. Among the most well-known Precisionists are: Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, Joseph Stella, and Georgia O’Keefe - to name a few.

What’s the Point of Precision? is inspired specifically by Charles Demuth’s iconic 1928 painting I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the work, Demuth distills the visual and auditory experience of a passing fire truck into a graphic masterpiece, filled with breathtaking movement and dynamism. What’s the Point of Precision? brings together artists who use exactitude to convey emotion and meaning through the use of abstraction and/or imagery in 2-D work.

Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, 1928. Oil, graphite, ink, and gold leaf on Paperboard (Upson board). 35 1⁄2 x 30 inches. Alfred Stieglitz Collection. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
Nate Ethier’s work has been exhibited in galleries such as David Richard Gallery, NY;
Auxier/Kline, NY; Danese/Corey, NY; LMAK gallery, NY; Minus Space, NY; Geoffery Young
Gallery, MA; Nancy Margolis Gallery, NY; Morgan Lehman Gallery, NY; and at institutes including the Susquehanna Art Museum, PA; Boston University, MA; Georgia Southern University, GA. He is a recipient of a Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Award and was a nominee for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. His work has been reviewed in such publications as the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, the Boston Globe, and the Providence Journal. He is currently represented by David Richard Gallery; NY, where he will present a solo exhibition of new works in 2024. Ethier is originally from East Bay, Rhode Island, and currently lives and works in New York City.

Jim Gaylord (born 1974 in Washington, NC) is a painter and sculptor currently living and working in New York City. He earned his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. His work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Berkeley Art Museum. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Gaylord has completed residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. He is represented by Deanna Evans Projects, New York.

Evan Halter combines imagery sourced from Renaissance paintings with an interest in the vocabularies of minimalism and abstraction. In 2013 he graduated with a BFA in Painting from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and received his MFA from Rutgers University in 2016. Solo exhibitions of Halter’s work include a presentation at Future Fair with Turley Gallery (2023); Vanitas, The Java Project, Brooklyn, NY (2018); and Partitions, Clay St Press, Cincinnati, OH (2018). His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, such as: Present in a Lonely Image, Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown, NY (2023); Knowing When, Turley Gallery, Hudson, NY (2022); This is not Surrealism, Dinner Gallery, NY, NY (2022); Crafting Reverence, Carracci Art, NY, NY (2022); The New Iconographies, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY (2021); memoirs, Pablo’s Birthday, New York, NY (2020); The Hawt Show II, Rolando Anselmi Gallery, Atina, Italy (2020). Halter has completed residencies at The Lighthouse Works on Fishers Island, NY (2021), the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada (2016), The Advanced Painting Intensive, Columbia University School of the Arts, New York, NY (2013), and The New York Studio Program in New York, NY (2011).

Rachel Hellerich received her Bachelor of Science from Southern Connecticut State University (2003) and a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2004). She has exhibited extensively in the NY region; her works are in several collections both in the US and abroad. Most recently her works have been on view at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT in her first museum show. During her time working at the Yale Center for British Art, she has curated and designed exhibitions based in the realm of furniture and design.

Sanou Oumar (b. 1986; Burkina Faso, West Africa) lives in the Bronx and works in Harlem, New York. He graduated from the University of Ouagadougou in 2007 with a degree in English literature. In 2015, Oumar moved to the United States to seek asylum. Oumar has presented solo and two-person exhibitions at Gordon Robichaux, New York (2021, 2018); Herald Street, London (2021, 2019); and South Willard, Los Angeles (2019). Group shows include: Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea; The Drawing Center, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; Karma, New York; Essex Flowers, New York; Parker Gallery, Los Angeles; Herald St, London; Gordon Robichaux, New York; Mormor Studio, New York; and Joost van den Bergh, London. A monograph dedicated to Oumar’s drawings was published by Pre-Echo Press in 2018. Oumar’s work is held in the collection of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota. He is represented by Gordon Robichaux, New York, and Herald St, London.

Kelli Thompson (b.1982, Monroe, LA) received her Masters in Fine Art from The School of the Museum of Fine Art Boston and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New Orleans. Thompson has been the subject of two solo exhibitions, the first at Good Children Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2009 and the second at Shelter Gallery in New York, New York in 2023. She has been included in many group exhibitions throughout the United States and been an artist-in-residence at The Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), and the DNA Residency (Provincetown, MA). Thompson’s work has been published in New American Paintings #86, Art Voices Magazine, and Art Maze Magazine.

Ann Toebbe (b.1974) is represented by Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NYC and Steven Zevitas Gallery in Boston. Recent exhibitions include a career survey, Midway, at The University of Illinois Springfield and a solo exhibition, Days of Our Lives, at Steven Zevitas Gallery. She has been the recipient of numerous grants including the IL Council for the Arts Fellowship in 2022. The primary focus of her paintings is domestic life. Toebbe’s process is labor intensive, employing freehand painting, flat geometry, geometric abstraction, and intricate patterning. Her paintings are often multi-media works with furniture and objects collaged on the surface cut from paper the artist paints in her studio. Toebbe lives with her husband and two daughters in Hyde Park on Chicago’s southside.

Jonathan Wahl works in drawing, sculpture, and decorative arts. His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MFA Boston, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, The New York Historical Society and the Museum of Arts of Arts and Design in NYC. He has been featured or reviewed in publications such as The New York Times, Art in America, The New Yorker, Architectural Digest, Oprah Magazine, W Jewelry, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Metalsmith Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, the Aventurine and the Advocate, among others. Wahl has been awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Emerging Artist Fellowship from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships (one for Craft and one for Drawing). Wahl’s work is exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Richard Whitten grew up in Manhattan with Asian and American parents. Whitten earned a B.A. with Honors in Economics from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Painting from the University of California, Davis. He has had numerous exhibitions and is in the permanent collection of museums on both coasts. He is presently a Professor of Painting and has recently completed a term as Art Department Chairperson at Rhode Island College. The Fenimore Art Museum is presently mounting a two-person exhibition: “A Cabinet of Curious Matters: Nancy Callahan and Richard Whitten” (Sept 16-December 3, 2023) and the Morris Museum will present a solo exhibition of Whitten’s work: “Set in Motion: from the studio of Richard Whitten” (February-September 2024). He is also honored to be a recipient of a 2023 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.

Media

• Painting
• Drawing

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