Chase Contemporary is pleased to announce Two Doors Down, a two-person exhibition with abstract painters and artist couple Stanley Casselman and Hallie Hart. The show will reveal Stanley Casselman’s new Liquid series, reflective acrylic paintings coated in silver nitrate, along with action-painter Hallie Hart’s new round paintings, a series of atmospheric sphere-shaped canvases. The exhibition will run from April 4th- April 28th, 2019. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, April 4th, from 6-8 pm at the gallery’s 521 w. 23rd street location.
Casselman’s new liquid series is the latest development in his practice of painting on polyester screen. Casselman has experimented with polyester screen, typically used for silkscreen printing, for over thirty years. His works are created from the backside of the screen by pushing paint in the direction it’s to be viewed. Working in such a fashion, Casselman has pioneered a host of unique surfaces. Casselman’s technique includes throwing, splashing, pouring and then manipulating the resulting mass with a squeegee. The Liquid paintings are made with an additional layer of silver nitrate (spray chrome) creating a mirror-like surface.
The concept of gestural expressionism showed Hallie Hart a way to channel the life force and methodical chaos of everything happening around her into paintings. Aligning with several elements of Pollock in his conceptual and physical approach to picture making, Hart works with a canvas on the floor, using only her hands to manipulate, flick, splatter or throw paint. Further defining Hart’s unique practice is her use of catwalks, some spanning eight meters in order to get in the middle of her action painting process.
Stanley Casselman is a mid-career New York artist whose richly textured paintings subtly reference the history of abstraction. His works often self-consciously appropriate the signature styles of twentieth and twenty-first century artists from Mark Rothko to Gerhard Richter, while at the same time introducing novel techniques and procedures that expand the discourse and material possibilities of contemporary painting. In a 2017 interview with Casselman, David Anfam (Senior Curator of the Clyfford Still Museum) describes the artist’s work as so “tantalizing and complex” that it “makes you want to come back to it,” and he sees the “mix of randomness and pattern” in Casselman’s paintings as “a figure of life itself.” Casselman has also been favorably reviewed in such publications as Wall Street International, New York Magazine, Forbes, and Huffington Post. He has been interviewed by Brainard Carey (author of The Art World Demystified) for Yale University Radio, and Jerry Saltz has praised his “highly crafted minimalist works.”
Casselman has a record of strong auction results at Phillips, Sotheby’s, and Christie’s, and his work was exhibited in Sotheby’s S|2 space in New York (“Icons: The Art of Appropriation,” 2015) alongside Richard Pettibone, Vic Muniz, Louise Lawler, Mike Bidlo, Banksy, and Richard Prince. International curators such as Joan Young of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (NYC) and Laura Plana Gracia (Barcelona) have curated his work. Casselman’s most recent group exhibition was with Metro Pictures project space in Brooklyn, 7 Herkimer Place in a 2018 show that also included works by Marilyn Minter, Tracey Emin, and Carol Bove. Casselman’s paintings are included in the permanent collections of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation (Los Angeles), Borusan Contemporary (Istanbul, Turkey), New Orleans Museum of Art, Georgia Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art of Bologna (Bologna, Italy), and numerous outstanding private collections around the world.
Hallie Hart is an American born artist raised in New York City. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a M.A. in English Literature and excelled at creative writing. Beyond her passion for writing, Hart felt magnetically drawn to painting with a deep and instant connection to abstract expressionism. Hart interned for abstract painter, Annaleis van Dommelen in Holland and it led to an awakening within that she had never felt before. To Hart the concept of gestural expressionism would allow her to channel the methodical chaos of everything happening around her into moments; paintings. Hart's practice as an artist was then set into motion.
Aligning with Pollock in his conceptual and physical approach to picture making, Hart has always chosen to be over her work to have a wide angle view of the overall painting and to continuously be able to work around it. However, instead of Pollock's use of sticks and brushes to drip paint, Hart uses only her hands to manipulate, flick, splatter or throw paint. Further defining Hart's unique practice is her use of catwalks, some spanning eight meters in order to physically get over or into the middle of her pieces.
Hart in 2016 took her love of film and produced and wrote a short documentary titled "Fragments, Michael Gitlin". The film is a fascinating and provocative expose into the life and work of Mr. Gitlin. Hart has also begun a documentary series on art and music and will begin filming in the spring of 2019. Hart is a women's empowerment activist, and is a leading business woman as well. She will be launching HX NYC incorporating the beauty of her paintings into wearable art that cross over to jewelry, apparel and home lines.
Hart has received numerous awards including the prestigious, GemLucArt Award. Hart's paintings have been exhibited widely and her work can be found in numerous corporate and private collections across Europe, Asia and the United States. Hart lives between and maintains studios in New York, London and Monaco.