{"id":1641,"date":"2021-05-24T16:49:48","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T16:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dartmagazine.com\/?p=1641"},"modified":"2022-03-15T00:14:02","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T00:14:02","slug":"small-standing-tall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/?p=1641","title":{"rendered":"Small Standing Tall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Dominique Nahas<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stop and take note of Small Standing Tall<\/em> a noteworthy group exhibition of 12 artists\u2019 works curated by Jen Dragon at Joyce Goldstein Gallery in Chatham, New York.\u00a0It\u2019s a teasingly suggestive show that\u2019s been put together with evident sophistication.\u00a0 Experientially Small Standing Tall<\/em> contains a multitude of diverse, small-sized artworks that, somehow, loom large in your consciousness as a viewer while you\u2019re in the gallery space and lingers within you long after you\u2019ve left the gallery premises. I say \u201cteasingly\u201d as the works in the exhibition give off more energy than they consume, as the compactness of the works is deceptive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sarah
Sarah Hinckley<\/strong>, “after the wind 14, 18, 12<\/em>” , installation view <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Each artwork, carrying a powerful punch, is selected by curator Jen Dragon with an eye towards intimacy. This sense of interiority unveils slowly enveloping conditions of unknowingness, exhilaration, mystification and, finally, joy. The art in this exhibition, while being of a small scale (most, but not all, works are about the size of a sheet of typing paper) induces sustained contemplation. To this point French philosopher Gaston Bachelard in his book of essays \u201cPoetics of Space\u201d suggests that such contemplation allows the mind and psyche to launch into what he termed a \u201creverie\u201d mode, a sustained connection with feelings of well-being.\u00a0 This in turn overwhelms the psyche as it gives way, Bachelard asserts, to a subsequent condition of revelatory \u201cintimate immensity.\u201d Such imaginative play lends credence to German philosopher Friedrich Schelling\u2019s delightfully accurate insight that art was the resolution of an infinite contradiction in a finite object.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sarah
Sarah Hinckley<\/strong>, “after the wind 14, 18, 12<\/em>“, joined<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The forms in Sarah Hinckley\u2019s gracefully languid and reductivist watercolor collages, with their intimations of tender vitality, lightly suggests the blooming of water lilies. The totemic, concentrated simplicity of each of her three abstract artworks work holds a nearly talismanic essence, a directness and freshness of approach that indirectly reminds this viewer of the essentialness of fluttering Tibetan prayer flags. Hinckley\u2019s contributions to this exhibition sets a grace-note to Small Standing Tall<\/em> that reverberates throughout the gallery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Michel
Michel Goldberg<\/strong> and Gail Hillow Watkins<\/strong>, installation view<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Michel Goldberg\u2019s wall work aesthetic of using only black and white coloration is advanced through a sophisticated use of unique one-of-a kind techniques ranging from monotypes with unique textural qualities to flat assemblages on wood assemblages, to India ink-on-paper drawings. Goldberg treats each surface with a radical intensity. His pictorial surfaces are buzzing with activity: we see his applied, nearly miniaturized skeins of paint, his staccato stippling of tiny tremulous brush strokes as constitutive elements suggestive of overlaid handwritten secret alphabets. The artists painterly marks vacillate ambivalently between appearing to be self-effacing, mechanical and constructive at times; at other times they give the appearance of expressive randomness, of idiosyncratic, ostentatious deliberateness. A rigorous, visual poetry of interiority pervades.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kaethe
Kaethe Kauffman<\/strong>, Palms Black 4-S&X \u00a9 <\/em>, 2021, collage, mixed media, 12″ x 14″<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Kaethe Kauffman\u2019s yogic-inspired, mixed media photo-collages are enigmatic, systematized and provocative abstract compositions. Appearing at first to be anxious puzzles, they contain stylized repetitive motifs and visual cadences of free-floating patterns incorporating recognizable body parts such as toes, fingers and palms. All of these forms and passages brings us up as viewers to a point of intense meditative release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Victoria
Victoria Lowe<\/strong>, Mindscape Sanctuary-Dream<\/em> \u00a9, limited edition: print on metal with electro luminescent light, 20″ x 16″<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Victoria Lowe\u2019s three limited edition metaphysical metal prints from her Sanctuary Series are experiential to the core. Her three artworks in Small Standing Tall<\/em> are prints on metal with electro luminescent light that allows the work to throb with an interiorized, irradiated glow. Corporeal and perceptual marvels, Lowe\u2019s artworks in the exhibition at the Joyce Goldstein Gallery compositionally include rigorous geometric forms that suggest otherworldly doors or windows glowing and primed to be open.  Overall her works invite cognitive and intellective suspension given over to meditative intensity, an indwelling space suffused with the resonance of the transcendental as well as of the here-and-now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Francie Lyshak\u2019s contributions to Small Standing Tall<\/em> consists of a small minimalist oil on linen diptych entitled \u201cCircle and Turf\u201d on which is inscribed random and repeated patterns that seem to emerge from the depths of the surface of the pictorial plane.  Additionally, there are two sensationally intriguing small ink on rice paper drawings in the show that use tiny, nearly unreadable handwritten words \u2013 micrographia \u2013  as a private, hermetic language of the self and as building blocks to create abstract visual field patterns and shapes. Such intensive works indicate a meticulous, concentrated mind verging on nearly complete introversion. In all instances Lyshak\u2019s stated artistic intention is to use the activities of painting and drawing to know emotions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Nicki
Nicki Marx<\/strong>, Elan Series #22\/19<\/em> \u00a9, cut silver pheasant feathers, acrylic, sand, 18″ x 18″<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nicki Marx\u2019screates reduced, patterned compositions using feathers, suede and sand applied to board. She causes tinymeticulous collaged creations are fascinating examples of work created by an artist who has for years has followed the beat of her own drum. Marx is the maestro of the feather and she uses the term \u201cfeather mosaics\u201d as an apt term to describe her aesthetic impulses. She uses entire feathers or parts of them (the barbules and barbs )( flamingo feathers are a favorite of hers), sorting them out, isolating them, adjusting them (using tweezers and magnifying glass, I assume) and affixing the small parts with the delicacy and precision of a watch maker on black undifferentiated fields to create unique jewel-like creations that catch the light  just so. Marx uses her feather sections as individual brush strokes, and one gets lost in these nearly mystical creations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deborah Mastersis a master sculptorand painter equally comfortable making free standing monumental sculptures using clay and fabric as well as much smaller wall works made of painted and shaped wood.  \u201cSmall Standing Tall\u201d includes two works from her extensive series of Crosses <\/em>which critic John Mendelsohn has described as \u201c\u2026like diary entries that capture the inner concerns of the artist.\u201d  Masters\u2019 artworks Luna Moth Cross<\/em> and Tsunami Cross <\/em>act as auratic sacral votive offeringsthat have homespun, folkloric qualities of fervent directness and whimsy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John A. O\u2019Connor \u2019scontribution is \u201cColumbus Discovered America, Right?\u201d a compact and colorful archival pigment print from his black-board style textbook prints from his ongoing Chalkboard Series that he originated in 1985. As the title suggests O\u2019Connor uses the old-fashioned child\u2019s blackboard slate as the signifier of societal learning, accumulated knowledge, historicized claims and the inculcation of values and mores. He applies a variety of collaged and appropriated motifs, insignias, patterns, heraldic cartouches, and other ersatz memorabilia (such as flags, cards and maps) onto the slate format to create an ideational or mental setting and to make poetically incisive commentary on social conditioning.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Eric
Eric Sanders<\/strong>, Silhouette Print No. 1<\/em> \u00a9, 2021<\/em>, monoptint, 10″ x 8″<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Eric Sanders\u2019sthree monoprints on paperfrom his 2021Silhouette Series<\/em> have a remarkable presence for their elusive uneasy relation to the self-portrait that always both asserts itself and seems to be in retreat, simultaneously. With their vivid blue tonalities\u2019 sections indicating oceanic memories that are overlaid with black sections that serve as jarring interference factors and their black sections that are overlaid, indicating slashed or redacted memories, the overall effect is startingly poetic and hauntingly vulnerable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Singelis, as a portraitist is acutely aware that the human face is the primary field of expressive action, replete with a variety of looks whose meaning is open to interpretation. The artist\u2019s achievement rests in his works\u2019 evoking meditative questions for the viewer of what constitutes the authority of the likeness of the self, and how portraiture is the realm where the identity of the self is both fashioned and fabricated.  Embedded in each of the artist\u2019s portraits is the difficult inquiry of what constitutes the projection of the quality of authenticity and why do we so value it when we perceive it (correctly or not) in others. James Singelis \u2019sdelicately nuancedartworks using watercolor and pencil on paper evocatively addresses issues of portraiture as a particular challenge of artistic ingenuity and empathic insight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Francine
Francine Tint<\/strong>, Tangerine \u00a9,  2021, acrylic on canvas, 12″ x 12″<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Francine Tint\u2019s \u201c<\/strong>Black Luxury\u201d, \u201cBlack Swan\u201d and \u201cTangerine\u201d in Small Standing Tall<\/em> are three abstract expressionist acrylics on canvas. After years of applied concentration Francine Tint has become a recognized master painter gifted with an acknowledged virtuosity in paint handling that suggests smolderingly immersive abstract energy systems. These systems invoke the sensations of uncontrollable expansion with its opposite: resistance and limitations. With their suggestions of disintegration and loss as well as with those of transformation and renewal the artist\u2019s small paintings capture an unmistakable and unforgettable mood of outsized sensual and savage vitality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Small Standing Still<\/em>, <\/strong>artist Gail Hillow Watkinspresents two small-scale hand-made abstract low-relief icons with distressed surfaces of fragmentary and faded letters or words. The artworks, heavily worked and re-worked, are made with mixed media, plaster, gold-leaf, plaster and wood.  They sustain a riveting fetishistic quality and hold considerable aura. So much so that demand close-up viewing for full appreciation of the complexity of the interplay of their compacted and weathered surfaces. The artist in her notes has remarked that she considers her artworks as contemporary palimpsests where layers of information and memory slowly rise from below to the level of revealment.  Indeed, there is a timely and timeless aspect to Watkins\u2019s aesthetic as she combines the look of an ancient artifact like a cuneiform relief extracted from a ruin or excavation. Similarly, her artworks have the look and feel of modern-century keepsakes rescued from the depredations of, perhaps, a man-made or environmental disaster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition quality of Small Standing Tall<\/em> induces a surge of pleasurable energy in this viewer, affording me an aesthetic reverie of sorts, as I gazed at each of the artworks each fitted so carefully in the gallery\u2019s limited precincts and each projecting an outsized presence. Every artwork presents itself in its own way and in its own terms as an undefinable yet exhilarating puzzle.  What\u2019s in<\/em> play and what\u2019s at <\/em>play in the works in Small Standing Tall<\/em> are individual, private multi-universes of seemingly infinitely expansive readings and poetic potentialities.  More about the exhibition here: https:\/\/bit.ly\/smallstandingtall<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Dominique Nahas Stop and take note of Small Standing Tall a noteworthy group exhibition of 12 artists\u2019 works curated by Jen Dragon at Joyce Goldstein Gallery in Chatham, New York.\u00a0It\u2019s a teasingly suggestive show that\u2019s been put together with evident sophistication.\u00a0 Experientially Small Standing Tall contains a multitude of diverse, small-sized artworks that, somehow, … <\/p>\n

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