Olive Ayhens: Unique Improbabilities

Olive Ayhens, Camelid In the City, oil on linen, 51″x39″ 2019

Olive Ayhens paints unexpected landscapes in which roaming animals, lush fauna and zooming cars frequently co-inhabit familiar urban environments. In her world you may encounter by a vivid East river shore a Prehistoric animal, utterly oblivious to a dazzling Gotham vista on the horizon. Olive Ayhens talks with Art Spiel about her process, ideas, and “Urbanities and Ur-Beasts” , her upcoming show at Bookstein Projects opening October 30th .

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Rosa Valado: The Feeling of a Space

Rosa Valado, Time, detail, mixed media on paper, 8′ x 16′, 2017 , photo courtesy of Rosa Valado

The Spanish born NYC based artist Rosa Valado has prompted in her immersive installations multi-layered sensory experiences, utilizing diverse approaches, from the smell of burning wax and music to architectural elements and engineering problem solving. Throughout her body of work which includes besides installation, drawings and paintings, she has been exploring notions of space and time by engaging with ideas on architecture and light. Rosa Valado shares with Art Spiel some of her formative art experiences, her process, ideas, and projects.

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Elizabeth Velazquez: All Realities

Elizabeth Velazquez, Cigar Factory Final Exhibition, 2019, installation view- 2 of 4 rooms, photo courtesy Sakeenah Saleem

Elizabeth Velazquez makes powerful installations in response to the history and geography of a site. While her work often unleashes dark secrets from a hidden past with particular sensibility to social injustice, it also elevates our gaze upwards, conjuring an essence of spirituality out of the materials she is using. The artist shares with Art Spiel the ideas and process behind her recent body of work.

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Julien Gardair: Polyphonic Situations

Julien Gardair, Whole together, All apart, 2019, pigments and acrylic on industrial felt cut in space, 7x20x16ft, BRIC, Brooklyn, photo courtesy the artist

The French born Brooklyn based artist Julien Gardair makes carpets, paper cutouts, paintings, sculptures, video or everything in between. This proclivity for smooth sail between forms in context of specific sites globally paired with his insatiable explorations, make his body of work versatile, whimsical and layered. Julien Gardair shares with Art Spiel his ideas, experiences, and what is behind some of his many projects.

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Rhonda Wall: Survival in Delirium States

Rhonda Wall, “We are Bleeding, the Blue Wave is Coming”, 2018 Paint & collage on board, 48 x 72 in.

Rhonda Wall‘s collaged paintings depict surreal landscapes where the wacky and the tragic co-exist. Her topsy-turvy worlds, in which enigmatic and often over the top cartoony characters go on with their daily business, are idiosyncratic and current. Rhonda Wall shares with Art Spiel her downtown NYC art world experience during the 80s, her work process and ideas.

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Jada Fabrizio: Ardent Fables

Jada Fabrizio, The commuter Photograph, 13×19, photo courtesy of Jada Fabrizio

Mixed media artist Jada Fabrizio is an insatiable story teller. Her appetite for narratives covers wide grounds and results in dioramas and photographs ranging from a domestic scene of a hen with a fried egg at hand, to a melancholy rabbit sprawling on an armchair. Fervently surreal and underscored with dark humor, these sculptural sets and photographs offer open-ended stories that tease us and draws us in. Jada Fabirzio shares with Art Spiel a bit about herself, her approach to art making, and what triggers her narratives.

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Patricia Spergel – On the Verge of Recognition

Patricia Spergel, Sita Ram, 2018, oil on canvas, 18” x 24”, photo courtesy of Tim Grajek

Patricia Spergel‘s vibrant oil paintings interrelate gesture, color, and form, to create imaginative spaces that are on the verge of being recognized – both playful and incisive, lightweight and massive. Patricia Spergel shares with Art Spiel her approach to color, how printmaking informs her painting, and her painting process.

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Nota Bene with @postuccio [ix]

TSA & Transmitter, The New York Studio School

TSA & Transmitter

It is often the case that the immediate juxtaposition of aesthetically kindred galleries TSA and Transmitter allows, maybe accidentally encourages visitors to make observations about concurrent exhibitions with relation to one another. I’m not sure the curators at the respective spaces are always keen on hearing such thoughts – especially from me, since over the years they’ve likely tired of knowing that I’ll always be looking for something – but there are times when the formal or conceptual fluidities or contrasts between shows are so striking that commentary of the sort proves simply irresistible. Continue reading “Nota Bene with @postuccio [ix]”

Seren Morey: Growing Roses with Thorns

Seren Morey, Stranger Thing, 2017, Ultralight, dispersions, pumice, and glitter on panel15x10x4 in, photo courtesy of the artist

Seren Morey is a maximalist . Her lush mixed media painting- reliefs resemble mutated life forms in the process of proliferation – organic and artificial, funny and freakish, decorative and disorienting. Seren Morey shares with Art Spiel experiences that brought her to art, including some particularly fascinating encounters; in-depth know-how paint-making and painting processes; and reflections on her development as an artist.

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Nota Bene with @postuccio [viii]

Microscope, Underdonk

Microscope

“Scrapbook Performances” is an admirably extensive, broadly politically engaged series of evenings of performance art programmed by Microscope Gallery in relation to their current group show of video art, “Scrapbook (or, Why Can’t We Live Together).”
Performances have been scheduled for basically every Monday and Friday for several weeks already, and there are still several more weeks of gatherings to come.

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