Peggy Cyphers’ exhibition at The Front Room Gallery in Hudson, titled Passages, integrates disparate painting traditions into abstract landscapes. The technique—fluid brush strokes combined with sand and paint pour—draws from Chinese landscape art, Native American traditions, and Postwar Abstraction. These paintings suggest the natural world’s fragility, mystery, and grandeur, recalling the upward gaze from the base of a canyon.
Valérie Hallier working on the series Déflorée History in her studio during a residency with ESKFF at Mana Contemporary, NJ., 2023
Flower petals gradually became a significant element in Valérie Hallier’s artwork. Fascinated by the profound symbolism of flowers, Hallier initially struggled to incorporate them effectively into her artistic practice. Her initial approach involved photographing flowers in unique ways and settings. She also experimented with their dried components, adhering them to various surfaces. Eventually, she began to focus on pressing individual petals. Hallier discovered that working with petals was ideal for conveying complex themes such as femininity, resilience, sexuality, vibrancy, and decay. Born in Paris, France, and raised in Normandy, Hallier had a shy nature as a child. She was consumed with the ambition to draw everything in existence, a desire for comprehensiveness that continues to influence her work. Art, for her, has always been an essential means of engaging with both her internal and external worlds. Reflecting on her early art education, Hallier fondly remembers her excitement upon meeting others who shared her artistic ‘language.’
One finds a simple common thread between the three exhibitions of women artists in Andrew Edlin Gallery this fall 2021: spiritual internal guidance in the artistic process. The work of German artist and known medium healer Agatha Wojciechowsky (1896-1986), curated by Aurelie Bernard Wortsman, is in Spirits Among Us at the entry and main gallery space, while the work of French artist Margot (b. 1982) is in Margot’s Cosmic Sanctuary at the back gallery. The solo presentation of American artist Karla Knight (b. 1958) was at the recent Independent Art Fair in New York City, which briefly overlapped with these two fall season starters at the gallery. Led by their individual connection to the otherworldly, the artists make work that invites viewers to ponder the source of creation and artistic agency.
Peter Fox, Second self, 2018, courtesy of the artist
“Surface Tension”, Peter Fox’s third solo exhibition with Front Room gallery features a series of new paintings in which he manifests a controlled self-reflexive state – the layered painting application itself defines form and gesture. In this new series Fox has reduced his palette to earth tones, creating a rich counterpoint – burnt siennas, dark browns and yellow ochres play off cool blues in Payne’s grey. Continue reading “Peter Fox – Surface Tension at the Front Room Gallery”
