Scaling Nature at the Bronx River Art Center

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Left: Wildriana Paulino, Right: Linda Cunningham. Photo courtesy of Michele Brody

Scaling Nature at the Bronx River Art Center features large-scale mixed-media installation works by three artists: Michele Brody, Linda Cunningham and Wildriana Paulino. Curated by Gail Nathan, the premise of this show is to represent nature as a force of nurture and destruction through the use of materials from the ephemeral to the concrete. Paulino and Brody both work with cast handmade paper that hangs from the gallery ceiling to command the space. Their massive artworks invite the viewer to be engulfed by a feeling of being one with nature and simultaneously wary of the effects of climate change.

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Ulf Puder at Marc Straus Gallery

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Taormina, Oil on canvas,39.4 x 47.25, 2018

Marc Straus Gallery is currently presenting the paintings of Ulf Puder, a German artist whose landscape paintings are deeply evocative and strangely alluring. I was not familiar with the artist or his work, and I’ll admit, it took a beat to enter his Universe. But once in I began to see deeper into the complex issues he deals with in his paintings.

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Gail Winbury: The Girl who Drew Memories at the Wilson Museum

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The Girl Who Drew Memories, Hunter Gallery

Gail Winbury’s multidisciplinary art exhibition The Girl Who Drew Memories at the Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum on the campus of the Southern Vermont Art Center in Manchester, Vermont, addresses the intersection of art and psychology, specifically “vulnerability and creativity”. Winbury proposed to include poetry as a component of the exhibition and curator Alison Crites brought together Winbury’s paintings and collages, with poetry by living poets. The exhibition altogether raises the question “how do we tell the stories of our early childhood when at times there may be no words, or we dare not utter the words aloud?”

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Field Notes at Metaphor Projects


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Scherezade Garcia, Paradise According to the Tropics/Sunburnt Jesus,  Acrylic, Charcoal on Linen, 72 x 48 inches

Metaphor Projects is an artists-run space for contemporary art and culture founded in 2001 by two working artists. Directors/ Curators: Julian Jackson and Rene Lynch have mounted more than 100 solo and group exhibitions presenting the work of hundreds of artists and spent two decades developing what they call “the social sculpture that is Metaphor.”

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Magic Mirror: Susan Carr at LABspace

Installation view of Susan Carr’s Girls paintings on top, and self-portraits below, in Magic Mirror

Tired of phrases such as best kept secret, finally receiving her due, and delayed recognition it is time to recognize artists, particularly women artists who are in their prime, evolving both in facility and content. Susan Carr is a quintessential example, an accomplished artist who, over decades, has fearlessly mined the history of her own existence. Her latest exhibit, Magic Mirror at LABspace in Hillsdale New York is a tribute to her dedication, talent and courage.

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Birds, Maps, Migrations

A Conversation Between Christine Sullivan and Marianne Gagnier

Christine Sullivan, The Place Between, 44 x 32” oil/linen

This conversational exchange between artists Christine Sullivan and Marianne Gagnier was catalyzed by artist and writer Paul D’Agostino. He encouraged them to engage in dialogue with one another upon noting that they had both produced new bodies of work, right around the same time, featuring bird imagery. Taking this as impetus for a fertile discussion, Marianne and Christine decided to interview one another regarding themes of journeys and migration, and they discovered a number of surprising points of connection in their lives.  

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Love Letters to Paris: Ekaterina Popova at Cohle Gallery

Ekaterina Popova in her studio, Photo credit: Helena Raju

For the past several years, Philadelphia-based painter Ekaterina Popova has been exploring the theme of interiors in her work. The interest in this subject began as a way for her to reflect on her upbringing in Russia, but eventually evolved into a deeper investigation of the overall idea of “home” and what it means to her now. Her paintings highlight the warmth and beauty of lived-in domestic spaces, including items and objects that refer to a human presence without including the figure.

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Emily Mae Smith: Heretic Lace at Petzel

Emily Mae Smith, Heretic Lace, 2019, Oil on linen, 48×37 inches

Walt Disney has taught us that cartoons can be used to distract us while conveying the most serious of subjects. Understanding this Emily Mae Smith in 2014, introduced into her developing iconography an anthropomorphized, androgynist broom consisting of a featureless phallic shaft attached to a twig brush. This broom, a descendant of the demonic mops portrayed in sorcerer’s apprentice section of Disney’s Fantasia (1940), has become a signature image in her work. Joined with icons associated with desire and fear, Smith has used this figure as both a male and female trope, as well as an alter-ego. To greater and lesser degrees Smith uses her glossary of icons in some cases to engage in heady meditations on such topics as death, vanity, desire, history, etc. and at other times to enigmatically introduce such subjects with little or no commentary.

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Rainer Gross: Double Take, Solo Exhibition at East End Arts, Riverhead, NY

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Gallery view, East End Arts, Riverhead, NY. Courtesy East End Arts and the artist.

In Double Take, Rainer Gross’ solo show at East End Arts through November 5, 2022 in Riverhead, NY, the artist invites the viewer to take a step closer to his abstract, intensely colorful paintings. Gross offers the viewer the satisfying experience of engaging intellectually with the underlying organizing principle of his compositions while savoring a sumptuously layered array of the results. His paintings are comprised of two (sometimes four) identically sized, stretched rectangular canvases shown side-by-side. He applies pools, bands, bars and patches of saturated hues of oil paint on one canvas and water-based pigment on the other. While the colors are still wet, the paired canvases are then placed together, face to face. When pulled apart, the forms on one canvas imprint on the other creating a shared Rorschach-like result. The artist refers to his paintings as “twins.” The side-by-side canvases are nearly identical, yet their differences become an intriguing puzzle to recognize, trace and sort. This easy-to-grasp concept offers a frisson of delight for the viewer as they experience the variety of its execution.

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Alice Zinnes: Inner landscapes of Light

Alice Zinnes in her studio, with charcoal drawings behind

Alice Zinne‘s paintings draw from literature and mythology to create dramatic landscapes in which light and dark interplay as main protagonists. Her oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings often depict floods of light intertwined with fragmented darker patches, evoking dense and fluid inner spaces.

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