Denise Bibro Fine Art in Chelsea is pleased to announce its upcoming thematic group exhibition Process. Ten dynamic artists, whose works evolve in great part because of the process of the artist, are featured in the exhibition from April 3rd through May 10th, 2014. The dynamism of utilizing various manmade and organic materials, both with deliberations and happenstance, offer each artist a platform in developing visual language with unique structure, content, and ideas. The following are synopses of each artist’s modis operanti:
Rachel B. Abrams
Utilizing discarded materials from her working environment, Abrams creates works of art that are comprised of forms that speak to environmental concerns, often using the negative space from the material manipulations to create the next work. Through her studio experimentation, she explores relationships such as action and consequence, experience and time, and empathy and entropy.
David Ambrose
Ambrose’s rich and varied topography is inspired by architectural elements. Despite the inherent practical structure, Ambrose employs both control and chance with his watercolors by repeatedly color-piercing paper with a pin tool. This creates a system of levees, dams, and braille-like surfaces that control the flow of the pigment. As the sheets dry, hundreds or thousands of openings create elaborate patterns repelling the pigment. The surface reflects a densely colonized and textured linear matrix.
Carla Goldberg
Memories are the fodder of Goldberg’s work. Through her process of mark-making as a physical manifestation of time, she layers past and present. Her current sculptural mixed media drawings are based on childhood memories of seafoam on beaches and water surfaces. Meticulously drawn dots in multi layered lines of looping white ink on acrylic panels develop organically over the course of many weeks. Her sculptural drawings act as a synoptic matrix holding dreamy memory suspended in light and shadow.
Laura Gurton
Gurton’s paintings evolve from a refined process that seeks to set a balance between chance and control. Gurton incorporates oil paint and resin to form circular and organic shapes, resulting in images layered with a translucent glaze. In doing so, she imparts various levels of depth within her work and reveals patterns that are analogous to those of microscopic cellular forms, representative of the artist’s own interest and admiration for scientific investigation.
Shane McAdams
The current work of McAdams on display is of high technical virtuosity and conceptual invention. He succeeds in combining both microscopic forms with macrocosmic landscapes, blending semi-abstracted imagery of biological sciences with old-school landscape painting, such as of the Hudson Valley School lineage. On one hand, McShane creates clustered forms that resemble microscopic substances, such as cells, amoebae, and chloroplasts, while on the other hand, he creates dramatic vistas painted with realist, if not quite hyperrealist, precision.
Carolyn C. Meltzer-Anne Patterson
Meltzer’s photography incorporates a very close range, or macro technique, to capture intimate glimpses of the natural world in a variety of habitats. These glimpses, which are captured only in natural light, are her way of emphasizing the abstract within a shallow depth of field. Patterson draws inspiration from the natural world as well. Her paintings are responses to nature and music and encourage the viewer to elevate their sensory experience of the surrounding world to an intimate and personal level. This collaboration between painting and photography results in a dynamic series of paired works that amplifies each medium’s tribute to nature, but also deepens the understanding of the natural world.
John Monti
Monti’s work exhibits highly refined forms in plastic and rubber, made to represent pop utopian visions, mandalas, and commercial icons. The vicious material he utilizes often mixes and flows unpredictably, creeping off the edges, creating patterns reminiscent of psychedelia or the cosmos, as seen in The Mirror Pours, a series of wall works that consist of florescent-pigmented rubber poured on glass mirrors. The artist’s work also draws inspiration from imagined nature of the arts and crafts movements, another period of optimism that is reflected in fantastic imagery.
Donna Moran
After Hurricane Sandy forced her out of her studio, Donna Moran was prompted to reflect in her recent work the physical damage created by the hurricane and the over-development of coastal regions of the Northeast and Midwest. Moran combines archival digital prints with analog painting techniques in order to blend both landscape and architecture. Moran’s small drawings also showcase the experimental nature of her work, in which she dialogues with the Spanish writer Enrique Vil-Matas and expands her thoughts in the visual realm in a continuing dance of language and art.
Courtney Puckett
Puckett’s interest in using craft materials and a home spun process is one that began in her childhood. Her determination to use these various materials are not only a means of intuitive investigation, but also originates from her concern with the historical dismissal of these materials and modes as intellectually inferior and her desire to disrupt the hierarchical and categorical divisions within art. Her work in this show is made from furniture parts and re-purposed items, sourced from scrap piles and second hand stores, which allows the possibility of fresh ideas for new work.
We would like to thank artist, educator, and curator, Scott Malbaurn, for bringing some of these artists to our attention, and also Cade Tompkins of Cade Tompkins Projects for help in facilitating the exhibition of the works of the collaborative partnership of Anne Patterson and Carolyn C. Meltzer.