Carter Burden Gallery presents two new exhibitions: Over the Sofa in the East and West galleries featuring sixteen gallery artists that turn the idea of buying artwork to go with the furniture on its head and On the Wall featuring the installation The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing but The Truth by Mitchell Lewis.

We have all heard stories of people who buy artwork that goes with their furniture, matches the color of their living room, or works with the pattern in their carpet. While most artists are just happy to sell their work and have them out of their studios or storage units, some feel that this practice relegates their pieces to mere decoration, an afterthought that is made merely to fill a wall. Most would argue that artwork is meaningful and should stand alone and may even deserve to have the furniture selected with it in mind and not the other way around.

Over the Sofa was developed to turn that idea on its head by first having the curator select the artworks, then paint the outline of varying sofas and armchairs directly on the gallery walls under the pieces as if they were hanging in your living room. This playful show blends the work of sixteen gallery artists working in both two and three dimensions. Paintings and prints by Karin Bruckner, Stephen Cimini, Reidunn Frass, Sylvia Harnick, Vicki Khuzami, Candy Le Sueur, Mitchell Lewis, Susan Lisbin, Carol Massa, Sumayyah Samaha, and Gail Winbury hang over sofas and armchairs while sculpture by Mary Rieser Heintjes, Elisabeth Jacobsen, Bernice Sokol Kramer, Kate Missett, and Syma are placed on coffee and side tables.

Mitchell Lewis presents two large scale paintings entitled The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing but The Truth, Part I and Part II, in an installation for On the Wall that runs from January 12 to April 19, 2023. These two works are an exploration into Lewis’ current series of ‘Squiggle’ paintings, in which his focus shifts to highlight a sequence of indecipherable hieroglyphs, shaped from brief undulating lines scrawled across the eight-to-ten-foot canvases. In both paintings the linear forms playfully roll, tumble, shift, and spiral across a black background; the largest of the two works painted in stark monochrome and the next piece incorporating energetic color.

Mitchell Lewis studied painting at Hunter College in New York City, earning a BA and MA under the tutelage of Ralph Humphrey and Robert Huot. Originally trained in the minimalist school of painting in the 1970s, he was influenced by artist lecturers at Hunter, including Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, and Tony Smith. After starting out as a hard-edge geometric painter, Lewis spent the last 40 years freeing himself from those constraints and exploring his intuitive nature. His work can be found in collections across the United States and the United Kingdom. Lewis has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions including The Parrish Art Museum, Hammond Art Museum, Ceres Gallery, Washington Square East Galleries, New York University, among many more.