Buster Levi is pleased to present a group exhibition by gallery artists in February 2017 at 121 Main Street in Cold Spring, New York. The show will run from February 3 through February 24, 2017. The opening for the show will be on Friday February 3, 2017 from 6-8pm. Artists included in the show are Eric Erickson, Bill Kooistra, Ursula Schneider and Lucille Tortora. Each artist will be showing one of their larger works that reflect interests characteristic of their art.
Eric Erickson‘s painting Shelf contains images of common objects, such as a clock, the outlines of bricks, a simple shelf and a window frame. Also included are two brushy white shapes that although vertical suggest clouds. The objects appear randomly placed upon a densely painted blue ground which is itself divided subtlety about two thirds up from the bottom. His compositional strategy, use of space and painting process are intricately involved with Erickson’s approach to painting. He rarely defines imagery either logically or definitively. For example, objects are not arranged to emphasize successive spatial depth, though their size and value contrast varies. This creates depth though it may be shallow. Symmetry may be implied in the composition, yet nothing is really in the center and balance is pushed as the compositional weight is often shifted to one side. Furthermore, objects are cropped in such a way that they are not easily recognizable. The application of paint ranges widely. It often includes thin glazes that partially cover objects and sanding that eliminates others while also revealing the history of the painting. The sense of ‘what if’ permeates the work as Erickson leaves his decision making evident to the viewers.
Ursula Schneider’s August, Hudson River is one of 14 paintings based on the Hudson River observed from her window looking east towards Westchester. She concentrated on the sky, the river, Indian Point power plant, barges, the weather and most of all light reflections. In August Hudson River, the power plant is silhouetted against a dark blue, perhaps night sky. The colored lights of the power plant and especially their reflections in the water, which take more than two thirds of the space, dominate the painting. Schneider’s unique painting technique of pigment and urethane applied to laminate nylon creates fully saturated and brilliant colors. As a result, Schneider simplifies buildings, lights and reflections, which she has written that they remind her of DNA formations. Schneider ended a poem about this series of paintings with the following lines that may best describe the effect of this painting:
Light reflections like frozen torches are burning downward into the dark River. Pure colors playing on the surface fireworks.
Bill Kooistra’s painting Poles and Field is one of a series depicting landscapes near his studio in Orange County, New York. The Marcy South power lines that cut through fields on route 207 between Goshen and Campbell Hall influence this work. The paintings reflect Kooistra’s interest in how landscape is experienced in parts, while driving or walking that reflect different viewing positions and locales. Ultimately these disparate scenes form the landscape experience. In creating the paintings, different images are placed side by side sometimes without being planned beforehand. In addition, Kooistra also focuses on spatial combinations that defy logic. In this painting the field is depicted as if one is standing right on top of it and looking down on the grass and weeds. There is little or no depth as the top of the canvas, normally more distant, is painted in the same way as the lower area. The poles are also painted as if the viewer were close them, but in this case they recede toward the distance hills. The resulting juxtaposition encourages spatial comparison as opposed to recession.
Lucille Tortora’s gelatin silver print Chrysler is one in an ongoing series that she has titled ‘Transformations’. In general, the photographs in this series are comprised of multiple images of a subject that are reassembled into a finished work. Tortora has described her focus; “Fragmentation, along with the interplay of positive and negative space as it relates to form are the elements of my photographs. These transformations are inspired by the Cubist concept of revealing an object from different points of view.” In Chrysler the building does not align properly establishing a rhythm through changes in scale, as the building increasingly gets larger toward the top. This is the exact opposite of how it would normally be perceived when looking at it from below which is the viewing position taken in the lower portion of the building. The result is an image of the Chrysler building abstracted through the manipulation of scale and placement that emphasize the positive and negative relationships within the work as a whole.
Buster Levi Gallery is open Saturday and Sunday from 12-5 pm.
