Steve Rockwell – Page 20 – dArt International Magazine

February 12, 2022March 14, 2022

Nathaniel Mary Quinn and Not Far From Home: Still Far Away

by Mary Hrbacek

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, All the Lost Awards, All That Was Lost, 2021, oil paint, pain stick, oil pastel, soft pastel, gouache, black charcoal on linen canvas stretched over wood panel, 30 x 30 inches, 76.2 x 76.2 cm © Nathaniel Mary Quinn. Photo: Rob McKeever, courtesy Gagosian — **Nathaniel Mary Quinn**, *All the Lost Awards, All That Was Lost*, 2021, oil paint, pain stick, oil pastel, soft pastel, gouache, black charcoal on linen canvas stretched over wood panel, 30 x 30 inches, 76.2 x 76.2 cm © Nathaniel Mary Quinn. Photo: Rob McKeever, courtesy Gagosian

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, “Not Far From Home; Still Far Away,” at Gagosian, presented an exploration of Quinn’s relationships in fourteen intense portraits, created in a range of media that includes oil paint, gouache, charcoal, oil stick and pastel. Distortion is the keynote of Quinn’s inner-based perception, expressed in a vision that transforms the artist, his friends and his female subject, apparently his mother. He disregards visually perceivable features, boldly executing truncated, layered, re-imagined, and spliced images that exude a sense of deep emotional anguish. Quinn’s impeccable inventive paintings compare with the visceral images Francis Bacon created in his portraits, and Picasso’s Synthetic Cubist women.

February 12, 2022March 14, 2022

Forest Bathing – A Group Exhibition about Nature

by Jen Dragon

Forest Bathing installation view John Lyon Paul (left) Anne Leith (right)

Woodstock, NY – Forest Bathing is a concept that originated in Japan in the 1980’s as an antidote to an increasingly technological and alienating world. The idea is to mindfully walk in the woodlands and reconnect with the sounds, smells, colors and textures of nature. The recent Covid pandemic and its restrictions on indoor gatherings have forced a return to the outdoors creating a renewed appreciation for the forest habitat and its seasonal cycles. Inspired by the woodlands of upstate New York, this exhibition features artwork by Ashley Garrett, Anne Leith, Iain Machell, John Lyon Paul, Christy Rupp and Martin Weinstein.

February 3, 2022March 14, 2022

Nothing Left of Time: An Installation of Works by Matthew Garrison

by D. Dominick Lombardi

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. – Henry David Thoreau

Cloud Wall (installation view) — *Cloud Wall (*installation view)

Controlling nature, or one’s personal environment, has been an age’s old endeavor. I am reminded of the ancient city of Petra in Southwest Jordan, which was carved directly into the reddish sandstone, as one example of something of a massive and monumental compromise in that struggle between ‘progress’ and the destruction of the environment.

January 7, 2022March 14, 2022

Christy Rupp’s Leaf Litter

by Jen Dragon

Installation view of Christy Rupp: Leaf Litter at the Ildiko Butler Gallery, Fordham University Lincoln Center Campus

Christy Rupp’s latest solo exhibition Leaf Litter at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center Campus is an installation that comments on the environment while creating its own environment. Large printed digital versions of Rupp’s collages cover both end walls serving to expand the width of the gallery while sculptures of indicator species distort space as the perspective shifts dizzyingly from micro to macro organisms.

January 3, 2022March 14, 2022

Jacqueline de Jong and Violence at the Border-Line

by Carol Bruns

Jacqueline, de Long, Locked in and Out, 2021, oil stick on paper, 55 1/8 x 79 7/8 inches (140 x 203 cm)
Photo: Tim Doyon. Courtesy of the artist and Ortuzar Projects, New York — *Jacqueline, de Long, Locked in and Out*, 2021, oil stick on paper, 55 1/8 x 79 7/8 inches (140 x 203 cm) Photo: Tim Doyon. Courtesy of the artist and Ortuzar Projects, New York

Our culture is permeated with violence. By media or in person we regularly experience violent economics, massacres of children in schools with automatic weapons, relentless assaults on the natural environment, widespread domestic violence, and even violent car driving, movies, games and songs. In an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon the character Tarantino remarks, “It’s even in breakfast cereals” and we guiltily laugh along with children at their absurd and extreme ferocious capers. It seems we’re wired onto its electric horror and excitement, while its production of suffering in real life is staggering and immeasurable, leaving no one unharmed, usually the direct result of policy choices.