J. Cacciola • Gallery W is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition Dimensions Discovered: Michael Bartmann and Jury Smith. The exhibition will be on view from Friday, October 19 through November 24, 2018 located at 35 Mill Street, Bernardsville, NJ 07924. An opening reception will be held on Friday, October 19th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. All are welcomed to attend.

Michael Bartmann and Jury Smith are coming together for the first time to present a body of work inspired by architecture, structure, and space. Jury Smith takes her inspiration from many sources, and creates sculptures to transform the viewing space. Space and architecture inspire the paintings of Pennsylvania native Michael Bartmann.

Jury Smith’s current work utilizes ceramic material, and connects the dialogue between the material and her concept. Fundamental visual elements such as rectangles, triangles, and squares create compositions that highlight the individual, and emphasize the collective. Harmonizing this work is a sense of place and an appreciation of the spontaneous and direct. Maintaining distinct visual elements and material components lends meaning to the work. These pieces are constructed of firebrick, an elemental and essential ceramic material. In ceramics, firebrick is used as a structural material to house a transformative space, one that shifts clay’s relationship to water. In material and expression, the intention is to hold creation and longing as one in the same.

Jury Smith studied ceramics at Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Her ceramic work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in Europe, Asia, and across the U.S. Among other publications, her work has been featured in Ceramics Monthly, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Sculpture Magazine. Smith’s work was selected for the 6th World Ceramic Biennial in Korea at the Icheon World Ceramic Center.

Michael Bartmann explores abandoned spaces and urban environments in his paintings. Growing up in the small city of Reading, PA, a previously thriving manufacturing city, Bartmann has seen the city’s struggle to transition out of its rust belt past, which influences his attraction to transitional spaces in architecture. Michael Bartmann strives to create a balance between abstraction and subject matter to create tension between the space, the architecture, and the paint.

In Michael Bartmann’s current body of work, the defining and dissolving of forms and spaces indicate various states of abandonment and transition. He seeks to evoke emotion in the viewer by using spatial dimension, atmosphere, and defining architecture. Tension exists among the use of traditional one point perspective, the flat abstract two-dimensional canvas world, and the surface of the paint, and Bartmann’s work bridges the gaps between the points of perspectives.