dArt International Magazine

by D. Dominick Lombardi

Opportunities for artists come in many different forms, especially when it comes to exhibition spaces. Once you understand your station on the outside looking in towards the big billion-dollar businesses at the top, it becomes like a chess game where countless artists vie for a variety of venues ranging from the more regional, community minded spaces to the secondary level of high-end galleries in major cities throughout the world. The higher you aim the more you need to be well connected, otherwise it’s best to have your own fleet of collectors to do your talking. But who has that? After all, the market is in constant flux; what’s in, who has the back story, where’s the new vision; it’s all subjective, controlled from the top down, often sociopolitical and rather unregulated.

With the increased overhead, especially when there are economic downturns caused by natural or manufactured disasters, a noticeable percentage of mid and lower-level institutions close and opportunities decrease. I’ve often thought of the hybrid spaces, places where there are two businesses sharing a space or building that is common in places like Iceland, where a commercial gallery could lessen the strain of a fixed overhead when the level of needed population is not there. You see this in colleges and universities here, where not-for-profit galleries and museums are placed on campuses where it is a bit easier to keep the lights on, and where a very dedicated staff works tirelessly to keep their programs relevant and inspiring.

Libraries, locations commonly looked at as being for amateur artists, are more and more exhibiting seasoned professional artists with substantial careers, which in turn broadens the reach of both the institution and the artist. When I wrote for The New York Times from 1998-2005, I can recall reviewing excellent exhibitions at the Chappaqua Library gallery and the Manhattanville College Library Gallery. The Katonah Museum is a product of the Katonah Gallery, which was housed in the Katonah Village Library.

What first piqued my attention to the Schaffner Room Gallery located adjacent to the Pound Ridge Library, was a recommendation of a friend that Serdar Arat was exhibiting there, and I should definitely take a look. Arat, also a long-time friend, an excellent artist, and a brilliant lecturer with titles like Creative Flows: Islamic and Western Art to The Harlem Renaissance and Modernism creates alluring painted reliefs, room-sized sculptural installations and refined prismatic prints that address a number of topics such as architectural fluidity, the spiritual effects of color and the depths of visual rhythms. His show at the Schaffner Gallery focused on his well-known prints.

That same friend who told me about Arat’s past exhibition, Creighton Michael, has the current show at the Schaffner Room Gallery, which features seven key paintings from his Motif series. As an attendee of the opening, I was immediately impressed by an audience of mostly accomplished artists all engrossed in the paintings at hand, which in turn prompted stimulating conversation. The artist mentions in his statement “…the Motif series are the product of two unique marking strategies both using a motion capture process but deviate in their use of time and color.”

Michael’s approach is to first lay down what he refers to as his ‘deferred’ ground of vibrant color. Here we see leaf-like applications of transferred veneers of dried brush strokes that modulate slightly in intensity and opacity; all looking something like flattened fall leaves or flower petals only much more intense in color. Over this layer of acrylic ‘skins’ the artist applies the ‘direct’ half of his process: oil paint in a mesmerizing matrix of thin lines in a color complement, a powerful element that further triggers the underlying hues, which in turn creates a push/pull of optical sensations.

The Motif series is a tour de force of optical effects, as we easily see how visual stimulation entices thoughts of things experienced. Like Hans Hofmann’s paintings of the 1950’s and 60’s, when he was advancing as a teacher his “push and pull” theory, or “expanding and contacting forces” thesis, there was that same sort of non-representational dance in space we see in Michael’s paintings. But unlike Hofmann, Michael’s work has a more organic feel, suggesting things like ripples in a stream or a cluster of twigs atop fallen leaves. On the other hand, it is hard not to think of back-lighted stained-glass windows when viewing Michael’s paintings, as the background colors always penetrate the foreground, or what would be the lead lines of the window, even when the foreground is a ‘fast’ color like orange or red.

In the end, the Motif series is about the artist’s deep understanding and distinctive use of color within the non-representational realm. Michael plays with our preconceptions of color, and how it manages space and time – what we may have experienced peripherally, that curious something that disappeared when we turned to look. That is what gets in our subconscious. That is why these works have a lasting effect, something all artists hope to achieve.

Motif: Creighton Michael runs through May 4th, 2024. For more information please visit https://poundridgelibrary.org/exhibit/

by Jen Dragon

Since the ’70s, Christy Rupp’s sculptures and works on paper have explored the relationship between economics and the environment. Rupp seeks to make this complex topic – one usually examined in abstract articles – into a clear and direct visual narrative accessible beyond the language of dissertations, punditry, and scientific studies. Emerging from the lens of Discard Studies, a discipline that considers the systems and consequences of waste, Rupp weighs these systems and their short-term benefits against the long-term costs of climate degradation and the marginalization of threatened species.

Buried in history, politics, and culture, the politics of waste are rooted in consumerism with its voracious consumption and energy needs. Christy Rupp dives into this dystopia with welded steel, foraged plastic detritus, historical, scientific, and contemporary imagery, a dark sense of humor, and the uncanny ability to connect the dots. Her artwork charts a course through the turmoil, observing the trail of collateral damage as it moves through our world, seeking to interpret and magnify these interdependencies.

Some examples of Rupp’s visual unification of cause and effect are found in her installation Moby Debris, a collection of microplanktonic organisms made from welded steel rods and discarded plastic. To quote artist and art scholar Ellen K. Levy, “Rupp considers how waste and toxic elements in our environment corrupt the accepted way in which organisms function and evolve…Each of her aquatic-inspired “organisms” is composed of discarded plastic detritus and visually comments on the damage done to species when they consume the glut of inorganic detritus hurled into our food chain.” In magnifying the petroplanktonic microbes that inevitably find their way into a whale’s stomach, Rupp clarifies the irony of a food chain where the smallest organisms sustain the largest mammals along with the floating oceanic plastic waste that accompanies them into a whale’s stomach. A similar statement is made with the plastic-stuffed wall works of Aquatic Larvae, with the paradox of young hatchling fishes nurtured in egg sacks populated by a buffet of accumulated microplastics.

In works such as her Pangolins and the series Remaining Balance Insufficient featuring aquatic mammal skeletons, Rupp bends and welds steel rods into graceful lines as effortlessly as if drawn on paper. The animals’ forms are then sheathed in innumerable, shimmering credit cards as they float jewel-like in the air. However, these pangolins and manatees are victims of environmental exploitation as they wrestle with human-caused habitat degradation. Rupp’s visualization of their plight equates the debt incurred with their survival, leveraged against the temporary advantage of human exploitation. Made as they are of credit cards, this work reminds us that, unlike the world of finance, the biosphere is not man-made, and it’s impossible to manipulate with numbers and percentages. Natural habitat is much easier to destroy than repair.

In addition to numerous sculptures, the exhibition features two giant digital prints on fabric that confront the emergency of non-renewable energy and plastic waste and their enduring damage to terrestrial systems. While these immense banners cannot ever be large enough to fully present this unfolding catastrophe, an abstract appreciation for the beauty of materials out of place is obvious.

As much as Christy Rupp’s art is about ecological emergencies, she is informative without being didactic, while her playful wit and whimsical spirit convey the darkest news. However, her direct and accessible message does not come at the expense of aesthetics as the artist’s accomplished draftsmanship and percussive colors are at once delightful and dramatic. In visualizing the effects of ecological degradation, Christy Rupp does not pinpoint any single culprit – only because there isn’t just one cause; rather, there is a collective complacency that permeates society. Anyone who views Rupp’s work is engaged in some way as a citizen of a world in which it is easier to participate in a petrochemical-fueled lifestyle, blissfully ignorant of our burgeoning carbon footprint and impending doom.

by Steve Rockwell

Garrett Lockhart’s “Wrinkle” exhibition at the Hunt Gallery Toronto is an offering of paperback-sized objects that carry the look and feel of fastidious graphite drawings. The seven by five inch cotton and denim works over board are, in fact, inkjet transfers that wash onto the fabric imperfectly. This careful sifting and arranging of print magazine images evoke a memory of lived presence – a migration of the effluence of luxury amid closely-cropped photos of models and interiors.

Although the artist’s sources to his subjects span the decades from the 80s into the near present, the citing of Andy Warhol’s “Interview” magazine in particular is significant. Lockhart’s “Wrinkle” can be read as a grainy homage to Warhol’s Factory, which at its giddy peak was an avant garde laboratory, a chaotic jumble of the rich and famous with artists and musicians – the celebrities of the day. In Warhol’s transfer, his silkscreen subjects migrated from canvas to celluloid, turning them into “superstars.”

Lockhart’s catalogue of exhibition images, on the other hand, can be read as an art director story board replete with character closeups, sets and locations. His “Profile (Right)” and “Profile (Left)” are actor test shots, much as Warhol’s screen tests became standard fare for his film works. It’s the viewer, however, in the “Wrinkle” exhibition that splices and edits their own narrative from the sparsely-placed “frames.” That the works mime the pocketbook format rather than a film cell, cues us for a story rooted in pulp fiction. To the gallery consumer they are an affordable “prêt-à-porter.”

In a wider sense, the aesthetic impulse of the artist is the poetic distillation the material presence of selected objects. Lockhart has mounted an impressive bouquet of solo and group exhibitions worldwide in just the past few years, that include, not only Toronto, but Vancouver, Chicago, Brooklyn, The Netherlands, and London, England. A single work in his 2021 “Sleeper Cell” show in Montréal contained blank keys, aluminum house numbers, deadstock glass beads from Queen Street, found plastic jewel, hardware store tag, and wire, salvaged wood, rope, twine, found steel pulley and a sailboat cleat. Each fragment of a Lockhart work is a trace clue to its origin. In a group exhibition, meaning and import sifts from their permutation with participating artists.

While a formal singularity sets Lockhart’s “Wrinkle” exhibition apart, it’s best to view the artist’s full oeuvre as patches and swaths cut from a single bolt of cloth. Here at Hunt Gallery, however, your steam iron is not required. The linearity of the presentation makes its reading smooth and wrinkle-free.

Garrett Lockhart: Wrinkle. From January 19 – February 17, 2024 at Hunt Gallery, 1278 St. Clair Avenue West, Unit 8, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6E 1B9