This spring, Buster Levi Gallery is pleased to present a series of focused three person exhibitions. The second of these exhibits, titled, Connections II, will feature paintings by Martee Levi, painting/collages by Maria Pia Marrella and a mixed media work by Grey Zeien. The exhibit will run from April 8 through April 30, 2023. The opening for the show will be on Saturday April 8, 2023 from 5-8pm.
Martee Levi, Spring, oil on canvas, 44x46”
Martee Levi is an abstract painter. For the majority of her career, Levi’s artwork has utilized various geometric shapes in a seemingly endless variety. The paintings in this show are based on her husband’s garden containing a combination of geometric and organic forms that imply patches of earth or sky and hints of plants. The colors are bright and the shapes jostle and bump into each other much the same way plants grow as they mature. While inspired by a specific subject, the paintings stress abstract relationships and organization based on Levi’s personal examination of the golden section and the grid.
Maria Pia Marrella’s work is always rooted in reality whether it be observed or imagined. The paintings in this show demonstrate her interest in 14 century Sienese art, though with contemporary themes. Over the past six years, Marrella has used her work to respond to present-day events while utilizing elements of past and at times popular art to express her messages. Marrella is a synthesizer as an artist and the work in this exhibition bring together religious symbolism, keenly observed elements of light and texture from reality and abstracted elements of collage. The various themes are often combined using illogical thematic or spatial juxtapositions that are held together through, at times, a strict geometric order.
Maria Pia Marrella, The Last Harvest, oil on wood, 12x12”
Grey Zeien’s large giclee, ‘Roma’, is related to a series of works based on billboards and walls he has been photographing overseas for almost twenty years. Zeien has stated that previous paintings in this series were about process and indeed the finished works are a result of as many as twenty layers of paint. Like the torn billboards and walls they are based on, there was no area of focus. Forms, colors and textures tumbled into each other advancing and receding into space. This work based on multiple photographs of walls and kiosks from Rome also appears to have no one area of focus. The difference in ‘Roma’ is that Zeien has imposed a regular grid to give it structure. Additionally, rather than having torn like shapes tumble across the work, they remain confined within separate broadsides. Finally, the work contains specific images and lettering that were absent from the earlier paintings.
Grey Zeien, Roma, digital photographs, 32x84”