James Adelman, Dina Brodsky, Maya Brodsky, Michelle Doll, Ke Feng*, Caitlin Hurd, Karl Koett, Tun Myaing, Jason Talley*
<click here to see the slide show>
Show Dates: through March 19th
This February Artana treats its Boston followers to new work by nine upcoming NYC artists! We invite you to stop by 355 Boylston Street to experience these 30 captivating paintings firsthand. To learn more about the show or the artists participating in this special event, please contact Artana's Director Heather Roy for a private showing or group gallery tour.
"Poetry of Space" suggests art that evokes an aesthetic and emotive response while transcending the narrower limits of the traditional framed image. The nine artists exhibiting in "Poetry of Space" move beyond their rigorous and broadly classical apprenticeship in creating work that shows both freshness and evolution.
We have attempted to provide significant breadth and contrast in the pictures exhibited. Michelle Doll's figures reflect sensual warmth and communicate the beauty of life in unexpectedly pensive scenes while in Jason Talley's portraits one can sense both the erotic and the emotional. By way of contrast Karl Koett demonstrates an ability to capture nineteenth-century solidity and earthiness, elements far removed from the whimsicality of Caitlin Hurd's animals in flight. In a further contrast, James Adelman's methodically detailed portraits are Presque vu on canvass, leaving the viewer on the brink of recognition, wishing desperately to have the darkened scene thrown into light. Maya Brodsky's paintings play on the mind's struggle to define time, while Dina Brodsky's work reconciles the simultaneous presence of textures, tones, and colors of the past in a distinctly contemporary form. Tun Myaing has captured his models in motion at a point in time, but the streaks running from the canvas edge intimate that motion and time continue. Finally, Ke Feng's works are made from an algorithm of the artist's creation, translating the late 16th century Chinese text of Journey to the West into ethereal landscapes.
The pleasure of poetry lies in ever-changing voices and themes operating within flexible boundaries; the reward of this exhibition is, we hope, different creative energies working both within and beyond standard space, engaging the viewer as poetry engages the listener. The effect of "Poetry of Space" is the visitor's moment of discovery as the exhibited works show him how his mind unconsciously understands time, space, and memory together as a single faculty. —Peter Skinner
