brooklyn – Page 17

August 23, 2021July 23, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Dee Shapiro – From Fibonacci to Bathers

A person smiling in front of a curtain

Description automatically generated with low confidence — The artist at the Islip Museum. “Cornered”, watercolor on graph paper, 40 x 40 inches, 1975-76

Dee Shapiro’s paintings have evolved over decades of a rigorous thematic and formal search—how colors and shapes can express the intricate relationship between pattern, geometry, and nature through a two- dimensional form? With what appears to be a strong impetus to constantly re-invent her painterly vocabulary, Dee Shapiro’s work keeps us on our toes with each of her series of work, which she sees overall as evoking an alternate reality with absurd connection. From her early Fibonacci progression color coded on graph paper, to her later representational Bathers series–Shapiro’s paintings assert themselves with a life of their own, without a need for any explanation.

August 22, 2021August 22, 2021, by Tansy Xiao

Wei Jia: The Remembrance of Ink

A picture containing text

Description automatically generated — Wei Jia, No. 19238, 2021. Gouache, Ink and Xuan Paper Collage on Paper, 31 ½ x 44 ¼ inches. ©Wei Jia, courtesy of Fou Gallery and Chambers Fine Art

At a certain point in one’s life, they stop making new marks or registering new memories. All that remains is a fluid, ever-changing assemblage of the fragments from the past. I would call it no stagnation: it is rather a moderate manner of growing at a different pace.

August 16, 2021August 16, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Todd Bartel: an Omni-coupler

A person standing in front of a blackboard

Description automatically generated with medium confidence — *Todd Bartel in front of Pollination of Devonia, (Synterial series), 2002, gallery talk, L(and) exhibition, Room 83, Watertown, MA, photo courtesy of Ellen Wineberg*

Todd Bartel came to serious collage because of an assignment he received on the first day of his first class as a freshman at RISD. He recalls the desks were strewn with magazines, and as soon as the course started, Professor Hardu Keck gave the students a prompt, “Create five collages that work with the following sentence: Surrealism is the chance happening of finding an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissecting table.” Keck did not mention he was quoting Andre Breton, who was quoting Comte de Lautréamont (Isidore Lucien Ducasse). He expected his students to work with the strangeness of visual combination and found imagery. That was Todd Bartel’s introduction to Surrealism and chance coupling. He fell in love with collage immediately, coming up with forty-five collages by the first week. One of the key elements that draws him to collage is that it can involve a vast array of analog and digital technologies. “I consider myself an Omni-coupler,” he says.

July 28, 2021July 6, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Common Frequencies / Frecuencias Comunes at BioBat Art Space

In Dialogue with Elisa Gutiérrez Eriksen

Elisa Gutiérrez in conversation with Miguel Gleason, Director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in NY, at the opening of Common Frequencies. Background video shows Marcela Armas’ video piece “Tsinamekuta”. Image: @onwhitewall

Common Frequencies brings together a group of Mexican artists whose work explore the intersection of art and science through sound, urban ecology, language, and collective imageries through performance, installation, photography, sound, and drawing. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of free bilingual educational programs that encourage the participation of families. The exhibition runs through October 16^th. 2021.

July 19, 2021July 22, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Naomi Kawanishi Reis: Snippets of Beauty

In her drawings, murals and paintings, Japanese born, and Brooklyn based artist Naomi Kawanishi Reis, utilizes paper and fabric to make idealized spaces, ranging from utopian architecture of modernism, gardens, and more recently, still life in domestic spaces. In this recent body of work, Reis starts with photographs taken by her mother of her ikebana arrangements displayed outside the family home in Kyoto. Reis downloads the images from the family online chat, the link that has connected her diasporic family across oceans.

July 14, 2021June 20, 2021, by Susan Hoffman Fishman

Imagining Icebergs

*Arctic Magnetism*, photograph of Russell Glacier, Greenland. Printed on backlit film. Drawing by removal with scratch nibs, steel wool with water-based crayons, 106” x 44,” 2019.

Multi-media artist and educator Itty Neuhaus has spent a great deal of time observing and interpreting environmental changes in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, and in Iceland and Greenland. Since 2000, when she took her first trip to Iceland, her drawings, photographs, sculptures, and videos have addressed the degradation of glaciers and the nature of icebergs.

June 18, 2021July 22, 2021, by Elizabeth Meggs

Twenty Twenty Twenty One

Art Spiel Photo Story

A picture containing indoor, floor, wall, gallery

Description automatically generated — Partial view of gallery installation, photo courtesy Jon Bunge

Twenty Twenty Twenty One is a group exhibit and corresponding artist book created by 18 artists. During the darkest days of the past year, the fellowship this group of artists built became a beacon of hope. The artists initially congregated in early April of 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, via weekly Zoom meetings launched by artist Mike Sorgatz, that continued through the year and up to the present. Inspired by their camaraderie, in late summer of 2020 they began casually discussing making a book to share artwork loosely relating to themes of community and connection. This book expanded into a corresponding exhibit, with Janice McDonnell generously taking the initiative in early December of 2020 to curate the exhibition at Sweet Lorraine Gallery.

June 4, 2021June 2, 2021, by Iara Pimenta

An Installation to Immerse and Reconnect

Installation view. “To Ripple with Water” at The Border Project Space, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist

In unstable and changing times, haunted by a pandemic and conflicts unfolding worldwide, the installation by artist Bel Falleiros creates an introspective space that allows us to pause and reflect on how we relate to ourselves and the environment. Presented at The Border Project Space and curated by Jamie Martinez, “To Ripple with Water” is an invitation to be present, to disconnect from the frantic times we live in, and reconnect to our bodies and to the earth, in a quietly performative experience.

June 3, 2021June 3, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Alyssa Fanning: A Thousand Moons and Suns at Platform Project Space

In Dialogue with Alyssa Fanning

A person sitting on a couch holding a board

Description automatically generated with low confidence — *Alyssa Fanning in her studio in northern NJ, 2020. Photo courtesy of Emma Fanning.*

A Thousand Moons and Suns at Platform Project Space in Dumbo, Brooklyn, features Alyssa Fanning’s elaborate and richly layered graphite and colored pencil drawings on paper, focusing on the duality of strength and fragility of the natural world. The work includes drawings from two related series, created through a process of combining projection, stencil and improvisation. The pieces range in size from 2.75 by 4.75 inches to 16 by 20 inches and within these intimate boundaries, Alyssa Fanning creates intricate worlds which invite you to plunge in. The exhibition opens June 5^th with an opening reception June 4th, and runs through July 3^rd, 2021.

May 13, 2021May 13, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Daughters of Lam at FiveMyles

In Dialogue with Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow and Rachelle Dang

Daughters of Lam at FiveMyles features work by two artists of Chinese descent – one from Jamaica and one from Hawai`i – paying tribute to Wifredo Lam, an artist who drew on an Afro-Cuban and Chinese heritage to create works evoking spirituality and the power of nature. Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow and Rachelle Dang reflect in their installation work on notions of landscape, history, and myth.