José Manuel Ciria’s Beautiful Day with a Small Storm

by Steve Rockwell

The exhibition A Beautiful Day with a Small Storm at the Christopher Cutts Gallery is a unique one. A month before its opening in June, the paintings by Madrid artist José Manuel Ciria were a mere glimmer in the artist’s eye. The works were in fact created in a studio directly above the exhibition space. In that sense, what is on display has descended from above, their generation a touch miraculous in the speed of their execution.  

José Manuel Ciria in studio at Christopher Cutts Gallery, 2019

Ciria exudes the personable confidence of someone who is at ease in his own skin. This is a way of saying that Ciria inhabits his work, and that the life and breath of his canvases are closely woven into the artist’s own persona. Continue reading “José Manuel Ciria’s Beautiful Day with a Small Storm”

Jung Ho Lee: Entropy’s Painter

by Siba Kumar Das

Jung Ho Lee, Self Portrait, 2018, acrylic on linen, 76" x 51"
Jung Ho Lee, Self Portrait, 2018, acrylic on linen, 76″ x 51″

New York City is constantly pushing the world of art to reboot itself. To see how a young Korean-American artist is contributing to this ceaseless reinvention in a promising way, go to 69 Eldridge Street in Lower Manhattan and there, in a popup display space exemplifying cultural entrepreneurship, you will encounter sixteen paintings that will give you a memorable viewing experience. 

Nurtured by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and then by Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, Jung Ho Lee is an artist drawn to multiple genres – sculpture, painting, collage, and photography. Continue reading “Jung Ho Lee: Entropy’s Painter”

Three New Exhibitions at the Hammond Museum & Japanese Stroll Garden

by D. Dominick Lombardi

Sam Bartman, Majestic Waters (2001)
Sam Bartman, Majestic Waters (2001), mixed media on reflective plastic sheet, 17 x 17 inches

With three exhibitions opening at the Hammond Museum, the big surprise is the work of Sam Bartman. Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1922, Bartman has spent the last 60 years of his life creating stirring paintings that combine some of the most the incompatible materials. In experimenting with what he calls his “special sauce”, Bartman has somehow tamed a mix of resins, varnishes, motor oil, glitter and automotive paints with oils and acrylics that results in everything from endlessly crackling surfaces and minute swirling storms of color. There are even the occasional brushstrokes that push the variously drying materials around leaving fossil like impressions of battered brush hairs sorrowfully spent in a furious wake of swished paint. Continue reading “Three New Exhibitions at the Hammond Museum & Japanese Stroll Garden”