Couplings

Forum Gallery [NY]

from June 24 through September 17, 2022

Forum Gallery announces Couplings, an exhibition about symbiotic relationships and connections between pairs of people, objects, and ideas. The exhibition, comprised of paintings, works on paper and sculpture, presents two exemplary works by each of eleven artists.

William Beckman is renowned for his depictions of man and woman standing side-by-side, but never touching, drawn from the Artist’s self-portrait and the image of his partner, both dressed in overcoats, a symbol of survival for the Artist. Continuing with his subject, Couplings presents a new oil painting and the related charcoal drawing, fresh from the studio, each monumental in scale and presence.

In his lifetime, the artist Gregory Gillespie shared an artistic and personal friendship with William Beckman. Synergistic of Beckman’s subject, the exhibition presents a pair of paintings by Gillespie, a self-portrait and portrait of the Artist’s wife, connected in their human-scale and stylistic approach, yet rendered independent in art.

Dramatic oil paintings of brides enveloped in sheer veils of billowing fabric by Steven Assael and charcoal drawings of heroic scale by Clio Newton depicting figures in Renaissance-style bucolic landscapes explore the psychology of the female experience, while artists Chaim Gross, Paul Fenniak, and Raphael Soyer consider human interdependence in two-figure compositions rendered in oil and bronze in the Artists’ distinctive styles.

Chilean-born Claudio Bravo and Guillermo Muñoz Vera create transcendent realist oil paintings combining the duality of present and past, suggestive of rich stories to be told. A figurative painting by Bravo suggests an intimate relationship between a male figure very much in the present with a female figure of ghostly presence, while a second magnificent oil painting by the twentieth-century realist master honors the tradition and fragility of the North African shepherding and agrarian cultures with a sumptuous composition of a pair of animal skins. Simultaneously thought-provoking and visually arresting, paintings by Muñoz Vera examine the dichotomies of globalism and of contemporary consumer culture.

Michael C. Thorpe, fresh to the gallery, has won fast notoriety for his quilts that tell stories of the Artist’s experience as a bi-racial man in America. Text collages created this year by Thorpe harness the power of the written word to represent an absent figure and provoke conversations about race with humor and wit. Language lends meaning too in the art of Alan Magee, whereby the titles given to works of art serve to personify the objects featured in the meticulous paintings for which the Artist is renowned. Presented in Couplings are works featuring pairs of paintbrushes and river stones, composed as intimate partners, codependent in their existence as suggested by the titles Nocturne and The Long Distance Friendships.

Drawing Inspiration

Forum Gallery

NY, March 25 - May 8, 2021

"Drawings show the hand of the artist," Nicola Lorenz thinks. She's executive director of Manhattan's Forum Gallery, and curator of its show "Drawing Inspiration”. You get a more personal connection to the creator of a drawing. "No two artists make their marks in the same way, just as no two people have the same hand writing”, she says. Plus, it's something we've all done — doodles as kids, pathetic stick figures, or maybe really nice ones if there's a bit of talent. For some artists, drawing is essential.

Is that a face!? A little mischievous, up for adventure. The drawing — with conte pencil and charcoal — is so meticulous. Guillermo Muñoz Vera, a Chilean, lives in Spain and is considered a virtuoso, a master realist known for his paintings. For centuries, curator Lorenz says, drawings were "rehearsals for the feature performance" — i.e., paintings. Kind of like stretching before a 10-mile race. Degas and Seurat changed that in the mid-19th century when they presented their works on paper as fully developed artworks. Like pieces by Muñoz Vera, or the American, Steven Assael.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: NEW WORKS AND NEW ACQUISITIONS

August 6 - September 26, 2020

Natural History

Forum Gallery

4 Apr - 31 May, 2019

Forum Gallery presents Natural History, an exhibition of paintings by Robert Bauer, Linden Frederick, Alan Magee, Alyssa Monks, Guillermo Muñoz Vera, Brian Rutenberg and Stephanie Wilde. United by their interest in the complex and multi-layered content inherent in the objective imagery of their individual pasts, each artist uses paint and canvas in a very different, and very compelling way.

Robert Bauer uses the language of portrait and landscape to convey the essential, emotional response he has to past and present. The objectivity of observation unites with the sensitivity of expression in his highly developed and palpably personal paintings and drawings.

Linden Frederick paints the iconic buildings of his upstate New York, small-town upbringing. Tinged with nostalgia but always based in clear, concise reality, the paintings, while specific, seem to bring each viewer to his own memory and association.

Alan Magee creates poetic compositions from natural and man-made objects whose history, in his hands, is palpable. Beginning with the premise that everything is what it seems and not what it seems, Magee spins his subjects into seemingly simple, marvelously complex, peaceful, contemplative paintings.

Alyssa Monks places her sumptuous figures in the natural world, often combining the verdant landscapes of her memory with the human body, hers and others. The result is a harmonious integration of man and environment.

Guillermo Muñoz Vera examines the world around him from the standpoint of his own history as a Chilean born, naturalized Spaniard in terms of a larger study of human cultural and geopolitical history and its impact on our world today.

Brian Rutenberg blends the colors and forms of the landscape of his native coastal Carolina with the excitement and passion of action-packed abstraction; the resulting image is uniquely his.

Stephanie Wilde, who remains dedicated to environmental imperatives in her self-taught practice, illuminates the inexorable role of nature to inspire woman’s pursuit of progress in her meticulous and fascinating mixed media works.

August 1492, 2011, oil on canvas on panel, 78 3/4 x 72 in

Celestial Navigation, 2011, oil on canvas on panel, 35 1/2 x 35 1/2 in

Egyptian in Egypt II, 2016, oil on canvas on panel, 35 1/2 x 35 1/2 in