Joseph Fucigna: DRIP-DROP, TICK-TOCK, HERE + NOW at the Housatonic Museum of Art

Previewing with Joseph Fucigna

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DRIP-DROP, TICK-TOCK, HERE + NOW, Housatonic Museum of Art. Photo: Paul Mutino

Joseph Fucigna is a multi-media artist whose work is rooted in process, play and the innate qualities of the materials used. Through experimentation, and innovation, he creates sculptures, paintings and drawings that are known for their power to transform materials, ingenuity and odd but compelling subject matter. His one-person show, DRIP-DROP, TICK-TOCK, HERE + NOW, was originally scheduled to open at the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, Connecticut in September 2018. Due to water damage from a fire above the space, it was rescheduled for September 2020, and postponed a second time due to COVID. At this time the exhibition opens for the third time on October 28th and runs through December 10th, 2021.

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Burbville – New Works By Kumasi Barnett

Jac Lahav and Kumasi Barnett in Conversation

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In his first solo exhibition at 42 Social Club (Lyme CT), Kumasi Barnett explores American culture, police violence, and stereotypes through the lens of comic books. Barnett’s immaculate paintings over vintage comic book covers masterfully transform well-known superhero tropes into brutal social commentary. Kumasi Barnett and 42 Social Club founder, Jac Lahav, share their reflections on Barnet’s new work.

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Fred Gutzeit Retrospective at Catherine Fosnot Art Gallery

Previewing – with gallery founder and curator Catherine Fosnot

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Fred Gutzeit (2021) Future Life Puzzle, Acrylic on paper on canvas, 72” x 72”

The Opening Fall Season at the Fosnot Art Gallery will showcase Fred Gutzeit’s body of works from 1966-2021. Although he began as a painter of found objects and landscapes, Fred Gutzeit has never been satisfied with capturing the realism we “see“ in nature. He has continually sought a realism through abstraction that would capture the hidden complexity of nature juxtaposed with a human search for structure. Musings about complexity and chaos theories, string theory, mathematics modeling, and current scientific speculation about “multiverses” are employed as he explores consciousness, interaction, identity, and searches for structure. His bold use of color and dimensionality are wonderous and aesthetically pleasing allowing us to travel into the cosmos of his world.

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Polly Shindler: Place on Material


The artist in her studio at The Wassaic Project, 2020, photo by Luis Mejicanos

In her paintings CT based painter Polly Shindler takes a close look at lived-in spaces – interiors with furniture of different periods, textiles with colorful patterns, flooring with different textures. Here spaces are typically void of people and at the same time breath with a sense of human occupancy.

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Here and Hereafter – Lydia Viscardi at Five Points Gallery


Lydia Viscardi, Maybe Hereafter, detail, photo courtesy Jeanne Tremel

Lydia Viscardi’s scintillating multimedia tarpaulins festoon the airy, post-retail environs of Five Points Gallery in Torrington CT. This quaint looking old mill town straight out of middle America may seem an unlikely destination for contemporary visual art, but Viscardi’s new work is worth a trip to the hinterlands. Ostensibly Viscardi’s imagery encompasses the weighty notion of life after death, but I was inspired by their joie de vivre.

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Instagram’s Shadow

In Dialogue with Curator Jac Lahav

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Now that many cultural institutions are still closed and we get much of our visual information from social media, artist and curator Jac Lahav has launched the provocative group show Instagram’s Shaodw exploring through the stories of 17 artists how their artwork is being censored on social media and how they are fighting back. The show started in June 1st and will be online through August 31st, then it will go live on the website as an archived history. It includes work by Betty Tompkins, Christen Clifford, Chiara No, Clarity Haynes, Joanne Leah, Raw Meat Collective (Kyle Quinn), Karlheinz Weinberger, Kumasi Barnett, Lissa Rivera, Leah Schrager, Michael X Rose, Micol Hebron, Peter Clough, Shona McAndrew, Steve Lock (Bill Arning), Sara Jimenez, and Tiffany Saint Bunny. Jac Lahav discusses here why he sees this group show as particularly timely and shares the background for some of the work.

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Artists on Coping: Suzan Shutan

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

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FLOW, 2016, Tar paper, handmade dyed paper, industrial glue, plexi rods, steel wire, KANEKO Org, NE, photo courtesy of KANEKO

Suzan Shutan is a sculptor and installation artist who creates room sized environments and smaller hybrid objects that explore the architecture of nature and organic growth. Paper and fiber are her main materials, forming patterns through repetition. Her work represents cellular structures, pathogens and toxins. She has been in solo and group shows in Germany, France, Poland, Ukraine, Sweden, Argentina, Australia, Canada and nationally at the Aldrich Museum, KANEKO and Bank of America. Her work is in private and public collections, featured in Smithsonian and Sculpture Magazines and NY Times. ODETTA Gallery exhibits her work. She lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut. 

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Artists on Coping: Alyse Rosner

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.


How it looks right now in my studio March 2020 Graphite rubbing on yupo, Works in progress: Graphite and acrylic on raw canvas

Alyse Rosner is known for large scale abstract paintings melding graphite rubbings, gestural brushwork, obsessive mark making and transparent color reflecting her immediate surroundings, personal experience and environmental concerns. A graduate of the University of Michigan and The American University, Rosner received grants from the Connecticut Office of the Arts and The Sustainable Arts Foundation. Rosner has exhibited at the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, BravinLee Programs, Odetta and Kathryn Markel Fine Art, as well as Real Art Ways and Artspace in Connecticut, among others. Alyse Rosner is represented by Rick Wester Fine Art.

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Artists on Coping: David Borawski

During the coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.


David Borawski with his work You go forward I go backward somewhere we will meet, 2020, in the exhibition Mill St. in New Haven. Photo by Peter Brown.

David Borawski is a multi-media installation artist and an independent curator living and working in Hartford, Connecticut. His artistic practice is comprised of sculpture, video, drawing and digital prints. Conceptually driven, the work reflects upon pop culture, radical politics, art history and the dark alleys of society while drawing upon lived personal experience.

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