New Viridian Artists and Affiliates Exhibition

New Viridian Artists and Affiliates Exhibition

March 22- April 2, 2011
Reception: Saturday, March 26, 2011   4-7pm

Nancy Treherne Craig * John Cullen * Young Sam Kim* Vernita N'Cognita

Sarah Riley * Don Zurlo

 

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present new work by new Viridian Artists & Affiliates. The exhibition features a wide variety of art by these exciting artists recently represented by Viridian Artists. The exhibit opens Tuesday, March 22nd and extends through Saturday, April 2nd with a reception Saturday, Saturday, March 26, 4-7 PM.

Each artist in this exhibit has been given approximately 10 linear feet of wall space to present a mini solo of their recent art. Three of these artists, Nancy Treherne Craig, Young Sam Kim and John Cullen, deal with landscape or cityscape, but all do so with very different and unique approaches. 

John Cullen and Young Sam Kim are both exhibiting at Viridian for the first time. John Cullen is a painter of abstracted landscapes, and in fact calls himself an "abstract impressionist". His landscapes focus on water reflections. When looking at his paintings on panels, one sees clearly the swirling currents and the splashes of color and texture that allude to watery realms, unidentifiable in reality but more clearly understood inwardly. Cullen who received a Masters degree in Art Education from Pratt in 1970, has since taught on a college level and worked as a professional artist.

Young Sam Kim is a digital photographer who received his B.F.A. in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in 2002. Of Korean heritage, he has been afflicted since youth with a hearing impairment and came to the US to study and explore his creative impulses here. His art of arresting pictograms are created ofurban buildings and scenes overlaid with fragments of photographs of people, sky, trees and planes, reminding him of dreams and memories of his youth. These, he has digitally collaged and layered into city scapes that speak of humans trapped in urban landscapes and forests of buildings yearning to fly away and to be free.   

            Nancy Treherne Craig who first had a solo exhibition at Viridian in 2008, aspires to paint more than pretty pictures. Her fascination with the natural world is focused on metaphysical movement and our life journeys. Composition is her most crucial tool when she paints, as she attempts to minimize gesture & aim for an appearance of anonymity. The work is intended as a reminder of the paths available to us if we will wake up and be aware. The artist studied with Elaine de Kooning at the Pennsylvania State University and received an Award of Excellence from the Kenan Art Center of Niagra Falls in 2004.

Don Zurlo, after study at Rutgers with Allan Kaprov and exploring a wide array of media & techniques, has returned to a minimalist approach in his painting in which ambiguity is presented through simple acrylic images resembling the torn paper compositions of his student years at Rutgers. Still as philosophical as he was then, his paintings echo his view of reality, for he states, “In many ways form is an illusion - our interpretation of an infinite variety of relationships between fields of energy".

Sarah Riley is the Chair of the art department at Southeastern Missouri State University and is finishing a book about various approaches to printmaking that combines a range of media. Her artwork too is an exploration and mixture of media and techniques combining drawing, collage, printmaking and paint. Many of her works contain feminist overtones, some alluding to autobiography while others, just moments in the life of an artist.

Vernita N'Cognita is a mixed media and performance artist who has been working and exhibiting in New York and throughout the world for more than twenty years. She came from Ohio to NYC in the early days of feminism, was part of that movement and has continued to explore through her art practice, the trials and concerns of contemporary women. She is also deeply involved with curating and creating as well with environmental activism, exhibits of art from recycled materials (Art from Detritus) and continuing to create since 2006, the "Endless Junkmail Scroll".

 

Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday 12 - 6PM         

For further information please contact the gallery at 212 414 4040 or info@viridianartists.com

Deborah Sudran "Paintings"

 Deborah Sudran
"Paintings"
February 8th- 26th, 2011
Reception Saturday, February 12th, 4-6 PM

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present new work by Deborah Sudran. Entitled “Paintings”, the exhibition opens Tuesday, February 8th and extends through Saturday, February 26th with a reception Saturday, February 12th, 4-6 PM. Deborah Sudran finds infinite inspiration in nature and has been experiencing that inspiration for decades. She's not an ordinary nature painter, but paints out of a love for the colors, forms and space that nature presents, particularly up close. There is no horizon line seen in these works for the viewer's vision is immersed in the elements and forms of plants, and though her paintings are painterly, her allover composition creates almost a carpet of color and texture. The works don’t have the sense of being painted from photographs though Sudran first photographs her subjects. Not focussed on the specific subject matter of nature, the artist is instead fascinated by the abstraction and hues of nature seen up close, whether in gardens, deserts or forests. Sudran studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the University of Michigan. Though the artist has shown in numerous group and solo shows including the Aldrich Museum, the Museum of the Hudson Highlands and Cornwall on Hudson, this is her first solo since 1996. She is in numerous prestigious corporate collections, including AT&T, IBM and Pfizer. Gallery hours: Tuesday through Sat

Viridian Artists' 1st International Juried Photography Exhibition

Viridian Artists' 1st International Juried Photography Exhibition
Juried by Elisabeth Sussman, Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
January 18, - February 5, 2011
Reception: Saturday, January 22, 4:00 - 7:00 pm.

Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present their inaugural International Juried Photography Exhibition. Curated by Elisabeth Sussman, Senior Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the exhibition opens January 18, and continues through February 5, 2011. In celebration, a special reception will be held on Saturday, January 22nd, 4:00-7:00pm. This exhibition is a diverse gathering of 26 photographers from the United States and abroad. They share a common interest in capturing a specific moment and situation. Their goal is to share their personal point of view and instincts with others. Curator, Elisabeth Sussman of the Whitney Museum viewed many images sent to Viridian from around the world. The photography chosen communicates a broad range of sensibilities instilling in the viewer a feeling of joy and possibility. The show encompasses a wide range of photographic media including silver gelatin, digital, ink jet, mixed-media, and installation. In her curatorial statement, Sussman talks about the breadth of photography today and the multiplicity of choices in the kind of camera the artist can use as well as the range of manipulation now possible, making photography an exciting and ever-changing part of the visual landscape of art media today. But despite the wide range of choices, she says, " all the photographers, I think share a basic concern, which I would describe as a conviction that photography has a dual role: that a photograph is both an aesthetic object and a conveyor of information." There is so much interesting and exciting work being done today in photography today that Viridian Artists' director, selected the images of twelve photographers not selected by Sussman to be shown in an ongoing "Director's Choice" Power Point presentation during the exhibition. She states that "the multiplicity of creative expression in photography today is staggering." Group Exhibition First Prize: Van Chu Second Prize: Donna Pinckley Third Prize: Lualhati Doctor Honorable Mention: Sophie Alexander * Brad Browne * Howard Heyman David Anderson * Michael Borek * Robert Carley * Jerri A. Castillo * Liz Clayman* Barbara Habenstreit * Brad Haberman * Ira Haskell * Stephen Komp * Illa Loeb * Harry Longstreet * Ricardo Murrillo * Vesna Pavlovic * Stan Raucher * Tony Savino * Mark S. Schmidt * Veronika Schmude * Eniko Szucs * Debbie Teicholz * Khach Turabian * On Power Point: Director's Choice Matthew Derezinski * Gordon Gilbert * John Haines * Chris Jordan * Barbara Hillerman * Andrea Kemler * Thomas Krueger * Jane McWhorter * Darryl Moody * Shirley Pasternak * Vera Sprunt * Soni Wallace *

New Viridian Artists and Affiliates

New Viridian Artists and Affiliates
Exhibition December 28 - January 15, 2011
Reception: Saturday, January 8, 2011 4-7pm Mary Wells

* Carol Brookes * Katherine Ellinger Smith * Sheila Smith * Lynne Johnson * Lynne Mayocole * Rosemary Lyons * Bernice Sokol Kramer *

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present new work by new Viridian Artists & Affiliates. The exhibition features a wide variety of art by these exciting artists recently represented by Viridian Artists. The exhibit opens Tuesday, December 28th and extends through Saturday, January 15th with a reception Saturday, January 8, 4-7 PM. Each artist in this exhibit has been given approximately 10 linear feet of wall space to present a mini solo of their recent art. Carol Brookes and Mary Wells are yet to have a solo show at Viridian, so this will give viewers an introduction to their work which will be featured in solo exhibits next season. The other six artists are Viridian Affiliates, some like Rosemary Lyons, Katherine Ellinger Smith and Lynne Johnson returning to the gallery roster. The works by Carol Brookes are from her Construct Series, a group of frame-like boxes which are in essence wall sculptures, material driven and inspired by everyday objects. When arranged together, these ordinary materials are transformed, becoming precious and jewel-like. Katherine Ellinger Smith is showing 2 large scale polyester film images, one entitled "WATCH OUT FOR THE DEER", inspired by an article about deer attacking students at Southern Illinois University Carbondale who were supposedly taking shortcuts through a wooded area where the deer resided... "I find it amazing how similar we are to animals, emotionally, in some ways...there goes the image of deer as being non-violent and disney like…" Mary Wells creates paper mosaics of cut acrylic painted papers, which because of their intricacy and realism, appear at first glance to be photographic images. These delicately precise collages go far beyond the usual concept of cut paper and roam into the realm of ultra-realism. Bernice Sokol Kramer creates sculptural works of recycled newspapers and other mixed media sometimes painted, sometimes not. Her standing and hanging forms speak both of the figure and all that covers it. Lynne Mayocole usually thinks of her art as a sort of story. This one features "Screaming Mimis", small wall sculptures, scattered around watercolors celebrating the vibrant summer last year in Provence. "Are the "Mimis" celebrating a season seen last year but far in our snowy future? My stories leave interpretation up to the viewer!" Sheila Smith's digital photographs are from a series of images taken of New York City at night that often approach the abstract. The series is entitled "N.Y.C. After Dark", but the light that the artist has captured, speaks of the movement and excitement of the city at night. Lynne Johnson's prints and drawings focus on texture and on the many forms line can take, both in the natural landscape and in the man-made landscape of waste and recycling. She is concerned in her work with those forms & textures that bear witness to the effects of nature and time passing, as well as the odd juxtaposition of discarded objects of humans with natural forms which she feels mirror the randomness of life. Johnson was also a winner in Viridian's last Juried Exhibition. Rosemary Lyons, a Buffalo NY artist, has been making contemporary illuminated manuscripts with political overtones for a number of years. The four in this exhibition are among her most recent comments on culture and language.

“Art*Thought*Gift” Viridian Artists & Guests Holiday Show

“Art*Thought*Gift”
Viridian Artists & Guests Holiday Show
December 7th to December 24th, 2010
opening reception will be on Saturday, December 11th 4-7PM

Chelsea: Viridian Artists Holiday show this season is called “Art*Thought* Gift” and extends from December 7th to December 24th. The festive opening reception will be on Saturday, December 11th 4-7. We’re hoping that those planning to come will “sparkle plenty”—both in personality and dress! Holiday time is fast approaching and what better way to spread the cheer and deal with gifting, but with art. Viridian Artists have invited guest artists as well to share their latest artworks in this group show whose title - "Art*Thought*Gift" takes off on the popular book & movie of nearly the same name. In this consumer culture now confronted with not enough money, what better way to spend then to invest in art and enlighten those who already have too much? And for those with not enough, people in the know realize that art can give solace to those souls hungry for comfort and understanding. In keeping with today's economy, there will be a special section of art available for under $100- Small works framed and unframed, limited edition prints, artist books, small sculptures that could be tree ornaments & the like. Though art may not be food for the body, art IS food for the mind & soul.

Arthur Dworin : “Inner Fire”

Arthur Dworin
“Inner Fire”
Oil paintings on linen and canvas
October 26th - November 13th, 2010
Reception Saturday, October 30th, 4-6 PM.

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present new work by Arthur Dworin. Entitled “Inner Fire”, the exhibition of oil paintings on linen and canvas opens Tuesday, October 26th and extends through Saturday, November 13th with a reception Saturday, October 30th, 4-6 PM. Layers of luminosity dance to vibrant magnetic forces and vivid hues in Arthur Dworin’s oil paintings and Giclée prints, completed over the last three years. Alongside dynamic geometry and juxtapositions, the artist creates work that is, at once, serene and electrifying. And his intricate process emerges—planted in canvas. Long a practitioner of Agni Yoga or Fire Yoga, a meditation focused on color frequencies associated with areas of consciousness, Dworin’s paintings have evolved like a many faceted stone. The artist’s hope is that the spirit in these works will act as a key to awaken what is already deep within the observer and anew with each viewing, bring a greater awareness of our inner and outer universes. A Detroit native, Dworin has lived and worked since 1967 in Manhattan, where he’s also been a Scenic Artist for TV, movies, ballet, opera and theater. The recipient of several grants, the artist has regularly exhibited in Europe and the US. This is his third solo show at Viridian Gallery. To preview the work, visit www.ArthurDworin.com. . Dworin’s numerous private collectors include MoMA’s former Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Peter Selz. Dr. Selz, author of 15 books on 20th century art, writes, in 2010: “Arthur Dworin's paintings are endowed with an original sense of sonorous color. Abstract as they are, they bring a new sense of visual order to organic forms of nature.” “Stunning work full of energy and wit. Gorgeous palette and bold brushwork, Dworin’s paintings have it all.”—Zina Saunders, artist, 2010 “Refined, complex and visually deep.”—Dr. Anna Aragno, psychoanalyst and former principal ballerina, the Bolshoi and Metropolitan Opera Ballets, 2010 “Having accomplished sophisticated life drawing since age 15 and success in several unique, non-objective oil series, Dworin today has reached a dazzling display of lyrical passion, motion and light.”—Jerelle Kraus, former NYTimes Art Director; Author, “All the Art That's Fit to Print (& Some That Wasn't): Inside The New York Times Op-Ed Page,” 2010

BOB TOMLINSON: “Love and Other Sorrows”

BOB TOMLINSON
“Love and Other Sorrows”
October 5 to October 23, 2010
Opening reception Saturday, October 9, 3-6 pm
Coffee and conversation with the artist, Saturday, October 23, 3 – 4 pm

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present recent oil and collage paintings by Bob Tomlinson on the ironic theme: Love and Other Sorrows. The exhibit opens October 5th with a reception on Saturday October 9th, 3-6 PM. The work will be on view through Saturday October 23rd. The artist will be at the gallery on Saturday, October 23rd, the last day of the exhibit, for coffee and conversation from 3-4 PM. The artist’s canvases combine oil paint with elaborately textured and printed papers, as well as computer manipulated photographs. The sensuous color and bold, sinuous contours of these elusive and lyrical paintings play on the tension between figurative references and abstract forms. The painter believes that there is no clear distinction between naturalistically depicted or abstracted figures. As art critic Lawrence Downes wrote: "Tomlinson employs classical anatomy as a vehicle for gestural abstraction." Focusing on form and rhythm as formal autonomous entities, the artist sets his figures hovering in baroque atmospheres awash with subtle color harmonies. Tomlinson’s themes are substantial and implore us to search our memories and connections to myth as well as to reality, but they are executed with an elegant surface treatment that often belies the anguish & emotions that lie deep in the layers of the work. Bob Tomlinson is a Jamaican-American painter born in Brooklyn, New York. He has shown widely in Paris, London, Amsterdam and New York and is represented in many international public and private collections including those of the Clark-Atlanta University Museum, Dr. Maya Angelou, Dr. Richard Long, Lord and Lady Hirshfield, M. Franco Trecanni di Montichiari, Mme Linda Weil-Curiel and Herr Waldo Klick. A graduate of Pratt Institute and the CUNY Graduate Center, he is also a scholar of French Literature and Aesthetics and has lectured and published in both disciplines. He figures in the recent book by Cynthia M. Dantzic, 100 New York Painters (Schiffer, 2006), and is the subject of a projected film by the well-known documentary filmmaker Louis Massiah.

Don Zurlo “The Inconstant Illusion”

Don Zurlo
“The Inconstant Illusion”
September 14 - October 2, 2010
Reception Thursday, September 16, 4-7 PM

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present new work by the artist, Don Zurlo. Entitled “The Inconstant Illusion”, the exhibition of paintings opens Tuesday, September 14 and extends through Saturday, October 2 with a reception Thursday, September 16th, 4-7 PM. Throughout his art career, Zurlo’s paintings have always been in a constant state of change, morphing from one style into another, but always attempting to express the transient, random, and unpredictable events in the human landscape in which both animate and inanimate objects continuously interact in a state of flux. Fascinated with eastern philosophy while in college, he continued throughout college and in later years experimenting with ambiguous visual images. Working with black and white torn paper collages in an art class under Allan Kaprow at Rutgers, Zurlo presented bold images of organic forms that existed in an ambiguous state of figure/ground tension. In the following years he experimented with more complex imagery and techniques attempting to reflect the continual change in contemporary life and perceptions. In the current exhibition, he has abandoned all of these techniques, returning to a minimalist approach in which ambiguity is presented through simple acrylic images resembling the torn paper compositions of his student years at Rutgers. Still philosophical however, his paintings echo his view of reality for he states, “In many ways form is an illusion - our interpretation of an infinite variety of relationships between fields of energy. In our search for meaning, our minds create images from these forces, filling in voids in our perception from the vast library of our personal impressions and experiences.” In addition to studying with Allan Kaprow as an undergraduate at Rutgers University, he worked with Robert Watts in the graduate fine arts program at Douglas College where he earned his MFA Degree. The artist taught at both South Carolina State University and Allen University in South Carolina and now is a full time artist. If you would like further information or photographs, please contact the gallery.