Haunting Impressions from “Life, Death, Hereafter” at Nevelson Chapel

Audra Lambert

A visceral and lingering look at death highlights the preciousness of living in ”Life, Death, Hereafter” on view through May 29th at the Nevelson Chapel (Lexington Avenue and 54th Street) in Manhattan. Curated by Jenny Mushkin Goldman, MA, the exhibition is produced in partnership with the Nevelson Legacy Council and NYC Culture Club at Saint Peter’s Church, home of Nevelson Chapel. A space for spiritual engagement and creative vision, the chapel serves as a fitting host for this illuminating exhibition engaging with loss, grief, and spirit.

Intersecting themes around environmental conservation and collective loss expand the conversation outward from a core theme of the individual’s experiences with death. Artists Chellis Baird, Nelsena Burt-Spano, Alexis Duque, S. Klitgaard, Katarra LaRae Peterson, Gracelee Lawrence, April Marten, Ariel Mitchell, Anne-Sophie H. Plume, Lina Puerta, Leonard Reibstein, Adam Umbach, and Paul Joseph Vogeler exhibit compelling artworks engaging with themes both corporeal and spiritual in nature.

Install image, ”Death, Life, Hereafter” at Nevelson Chapel curated by Jenny Mushkin Goldman

Artist S. Klitgaard’s paintings embrace bold color combinations that heighten the emotional tension present in these compositions. Psychological clues pervade the paintings, which create mysterious tableaux for the viewer to contemplate. While Ariel Mitchell’s haunting ”The Blind Search for Frog Eggs” appears abstract at first, the painting actually depicts the swirling of new life as tadpoles emerge from murky water. The careful attention here to color and composition create a dream-like world for the viewer. Works by April Marten, titled ”Death” and ”I Am” are two minimalist, mixed-media text works that communicate austerity, longing and memory. Marten’s sensitive approach to the subject matter forms a powerful elegy to memory and identity.

Leonard Reibstein’s ”Harbinger” produces a phantasmagoric vision packed with medieval elements. The dream-like vision of a levitating castle, along with the harsh color contrasts present in the composition, produce a harrowing effect for the viewer of this quixotic and ominous painting. Adam Umbach’s works combine the concept of memento mori with a Pop Art sensibility. The graphic style of Umbach’s paintings pack a punch in its pared-down visual composition style. Paul Joseph Vogeler’s ”The Violence Within” depicts stacked skulls in monotone in this charcoal on paper work. Vogeler pays careful attention to the formal qualities of these elements, with nuanced details of the crevices and surfaces of these skulls which are both evocative and chilling.

Chellis Baird’s monumental ”Anticipation” is a towering abstract painting that weaves together disparate materials, incorporating wax to create an effect that almost strikes the viewer as organic matter. Baird’s sumptuous and skillful use of material recalls both decay and new growth. Lina Puerta’s installations from her ’Botanico’ series calls to mind both the supernatural allusion of the term and the botanical gardens implied with the faux natural materials creating these aras of verdant overgrowth throughout the gallery. Puerta deftly combines a range of materials to form a hybridized, visceral installation speaking to a wide audience. Alexis Duque paints composite worlds that speak to lost civilizations the dissipating diversity of flora and fauna as a result of climate change and colonization. His intricate compositions create lush worlds that document growth over decay.

“Paradise Lost” (L) and ”The Flute Player” (R) by Alexis Duque for ”Death, Life, Hereafter”

Artist Nelsena Burt-Spano’s installation ”XO” is powerful and provocative. Violence and nurturing elements are presented in stark contrast to one another: a visual felt more keenly in the wake of continued incidents of mass gun violence in the United States. “Exodus” by Katarra LaRae Peterson is a diptych artfully portraying the immense and sublime experience undergone by Moses parting the Red Sea. This famed tale from Judeo-Christian history approximates the overwhelming experience felt by refugees escaping to a new life through hazard and hardship. Gracelee Lawrence is exhibiting a sculpture, ”You Can Only Think Clearly With Your Clothes On.” This sculpture feels both precious and tenuous, with sweeping curvature that incorporates 3-D printed abstract and representational elements. Finally, artist Anne-Sophie H. Plume’s Studies of Human Skulls depict expressionist and emotionally charged portraits of skulls, delicate and powerful continuations of memento mori traditions that recall the preciousness of life. Plume’s treatment of this topic marks a contemporary departure from this historic tradition.

Echoing artist Louise Nevelson’s observation that ”we are a mirror of our times,” curator Jenny Mushkin Goldman observes the interlocking themes and how the artwork on view reinforces the show’s premise of considering death in our contemporary moment. ”This group exhibition presents artwork portraying motifs inspired by symbolism related to the inevitability of death,” reflects Mushkin Goldman. ”Other artwork included speaks to the regeneration of life through botanical imagery and materiality evocative of verdant abundance and also brings to mind the Garden of Eden and the notion of paradise lost. Some work presented explores that which is not earthbound, furthering the idea of the continuity of life into the hereafter.”

In moments when we find ourselves dealing with collective grief and loss in society, exploring ways to view this experience artistically can offer new ways to consider the meaning our lives have and to better understand how death affects us from multiple perspectives.

“Death, Life, Hereafter” is on view through May 29th at the Nevelson Chapel. Hours to view the exhibit are Monday to Friday, 10am – 12 pm and Sunday to Tuesday, 4 – 6 pm.

Modern Stillness: Maureen O’Leary’s “Both/And” at Cristin Tierney Gallery

Audra Lambert

In Both/And, Maureen O’Leary’s exhibition on view at Cristin Tierney Gallery through May 27, the artist presents a cinematic body of narrative imagery engaging with moments of stillness in nature and in her subjects’ everyday lives. Drawing on modern portraiture and fusing these impulses within the contemplation embedded within the everyday, O’Leary’s ability to evoke stillness in her subjects is indicative of both her competence as a painter and her discerning knowledge of art history. Focusing in this exhibition review on the figurative paintings on view, it is apparent that the artist presents everyday scenes subtly removed from the digital realm. This adds a timeless quality to the imagery in these compositions. One result of this careful presentation is that artist’s portraits and landscapes manage to slow the eye, effectively expressing the psychological charge infusing these painted scenes. The artist’s works freeze individual moments in time, distinctly separating each out from a successive series of events to instead simmer and soak in the silence of these specific snapshots.

Commuter Platform with Dogwood (My Mother) Maureen O’Leary, oil on linen, 2022

In works such as Commuter Platform with Dogwood (My Mother) and High Rise Neighbor, the artist isolates individuals, presenting them within a seemingly static scene. These works maintain a dialogue with an existing impulse in art theory toward slowly digesting the image presented to the viewer, known as the Slow Art movement. In addition, O’Leary’s tendency to present the individual framed within a clearly defined landscape continues the visual lexicon ignited during Modern French painting of the Second Empire: the imagery which defines a potent individualism in painting, overthrowing the prevailing trend of genre painting prevalent at the time.

Arthur P. Shimumura, PhD documented the Slow Art Movement in an article for Psychology Today in 2014. The author outlines that “…the Slow Art movement is grounded on the premise that one should savor artworks in a conscious and deliberate manner rather than simply gulp each one down as “eye candy.” Phil Terry conceived the idea in 2014 when he spent hours at the Jewish Museum in New York focusing primarily on two abstract paintings—Hans Hoffman’s Fantasia and Jackson Pollock’s Convergence.” (1) Aligned with Shimamura’s assertions that one should savor artworks “in a conscious and deliberate manner,” O’Leary’s paintings employ two distinct formal qualities which support a conscious recognition of the imagery presented in her works. In the aforementioned works, the artist renders her subjects in outlines that are clearly defined and distinct from their surroundings. The figure is presented in a different color, contrasting their individual bodies from the nearby environment. The artist also takes the additional step of presenting individual figures who are wrapped in themselves rather than engaging in conversation or activity with any nearby figures. Whether walking alone, pensively, or smoking a cigarette, O’Leary paints her subjects with a deliberate focus on their introspection, encouraging a conscious means of engaging with the composition for her viewer.

High Rise Neighbors, Maureen O’Leary, oil on linen, 2021

Stephen Eisenmann in the historical survey text, Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History, denotes that the origins of modern painting were formed during the salons held at the of the French Second Empire. The author notes the shift in consciousness espoused by painters at the time, revealing that “Individualism and commodified consciouness – masked and justified by a crude ideology of Naturalism….replaced history painting.” Among the French painters of the mid-1850s, individualism prevailed as a means of expressing unique identity, as Eisenmann specifies that among these French Second Empire artists, ”Individualism was dialectally refined to include both personal autonomy and the popular collectivity,” thus ushering in Modernism in France at close of the Second Empire. (2)

This since ingrained sense of individualism informed many of the earliest photographs and films emerging during the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in Western traditions. It is this persistent sense of framing an individual’s psychological experience of the world around them that infuses Maureen O’Leary’s works in Both/And with a potent sense of self-awareness. In Scholar on a Tour, a figure is wrapped in reading an article, seemingly oblivious, on a hero’s journey toward attaining a personal sense of truth and understanding of one aspect of their lived reality – while remaining distant from their physical surroundings. This rapturous, analog sense of self-involvement with reading material in a town square exudes a cinematic sense of discovery, a Cindy Sherman-esque vignette framed within de Chirico-style environs.

Scholar on a Tour, Maureen O’Leary, oil on linen, 2022

In Both/And, the artist brings a keen awareness of the subject to light via a careful attention to color and composition, allowing for a reframing of our experience as viewers capable of navigating this nuanced understanding of stillness in action in contemporary painting.

Both/And : a solo show of works by Maureen O’Leary, remains on view at Cristin Tierney Gallery, 219 Bowery Fl 2 in Manhattan through Friday May 27th.

(1) Shimamura, Arthur P. “The Slow Art Movement: It’s More than Meets the Eye.” Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers. Accessed May 16, 2022. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-the-brain-the-beholder/201411/the-slow-art-movement-its-more-meets-the-eye. 

(2) Eisenman, Stephen, Thomas E. Crow, Brian Lukacher, Linda Nochlin, David L. Phillips, and Frances K. Pohl. Nineteenth-Century Art: A Critical History. New York, NY: Thames et Hudson, 2020 (281)

Back to the Future Fair at Chelsea Industrial

Contributor: Adam Timur Aslan

It’s challenging to make an art fair futuristic as with fairs in general, the goal is to sell art. What sells easily at art fairs? When viewing fairs like TEFAF, the answer can appear to be: paintings on canvas which date back to the 16th century. This begs the question, “…how does one create a futuristic experience inside a model that is structured around cotemporary paintings that will sell?” Future Fair is one visionary model attempting to answer this question.

Future Fair’s main answer is to focus on “cross-gallery collaboration…with partnered exhibitors in shared spaces”. The fair also brings budget transparency and profit sharing as additional futuristic elements. While many strong works are featured in this year’s Future Fair, currently in its second edition, these four presentations definitely stood out.

Paradice Palase shows the work of Sadia Fakih, who brings an array of 2D elements, color and figuration to explore a range of themes that include culture relating to her South Asian heritage, astrology, intersectionality, and feminism. 

Work by  Sadia Fakih for Paradice Palase (Photo by Adam Aslan)

Elijah Wheat Showroom presents the work of Hope Wang which features hand-weaving, screen-printing, painting, and photography to explore meaning within the architectural fragments of memory.

Work by Hope Wang for Elijah Wheat Showroom
(Photo by Adam Aslan)

Meanwhile, ADA Gallery exhibits works from Laura Zuccaro that transform structures into worlds that are uniquely defined by Zuccaro’s interest in color, space, and shape.

Laura Zuccaro Big DΛƬΛ .4, 2021 colored pencil on paper 11 7/8h x 12w in, (image courtesy of artist and ADA Gallery)

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery has chosen to create a summery euphoria via the figurative works of Norwegian painter Audun Alvestad. 

While in many ways creating an evolved version of an art fair is challenging, the collaborative efforts of the galleries and the overall curatorial vision throughout the fair make this effort successful.

Future Fair is located at  Chelsea Industrial 535 W 28th Street New York, NY. The fair runs through Saturday May 7th. Visit https://futurefairs.com/ for more information. Closing event scheduled for Sunday, May 8th at House of X – more info below!