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New Hudson 3, Contemporary Art of the Hudson Valley at Van Brunt Gallery
Besides being a snapshot of some of the best contemporary art being made in the Hudson Valley, New Hudson 3, on view at Van Brunt Gallery January 13th - February 26th, asks a seemingly simple question, "What is a landscape?" We all know the answer to this: a painting or photograph depicting a scene from nature. However, if one takes a moment to consider "Nature" and its place in the contemporary world, this simple definition blows apart. The line that once divided the natural from the human has been erased and we find ourselves right in the middle of the landscape we once contemplated from afar.
Artists have responded in a variety of ways to this new reality and many of these responses are on view at the gallery located in Beacon at 460 Main Street,
Some artists choose to carry on with creating landscapes that are more or less in the familiar tradition but viewed through the lens of contemporary sensibility. In New Hudson 3, David Patterson and Christie Scheele make paintings and Hank Gans and John Cason makes photographs that are closest to what most of us think of as landscapes. Others like Win Zibeon and Carl Van Brunt are goodnatured parodists of tradition, offering surreal and post-modern interpretations, incorporating a good deal of humor in the process.
Kathie Feighery and Barbara Friedman could be thought of as new realists for lack of a better term. The images in their work are clearly identifiable, but the virtuosic use of paint is as important as the particular subject portrayed. James Dustin could also be thought of as a realist, with a conceptual twist. His striking works depict views seen through architectural models of his own devise. What's real? What's man made? Portia Munson's beautiful flower compositions are distinctly postmodern and made with the help of a digital scanner. Grace Knowlton's recent work is also a digital. Her photobased pictures altered by hand, blur the lines between real and abstract, digital and handmade.
Many artists in the show move further down the road towards abstraction. Gabe Brown, Charles Geiger, Thomas Huber and Kirsten Mosher have all developed highly personal pictorial vocabularies that link that human and the natural in what might be called "mindscapes."
Vincent Pomilio makes rich abstract paintings that have few specific references to the natural world, but which come to life through a back and forth process of accumulation and erosion that can be taken as a metaphor for how natural surfaces evolve. Laura Moriarty takes the process of making paintings off the canvas, peeling and rolling encaustic blooms from a flat surface and then combining them in threedimensional abstract bouquets. Roz Schneider takes this process orientation into the realm of video. In her work, reflections on the surface of the Hudson River metamorphose into ghostly forms, emerging through the digitally enhanced natural process of flow.
Matt Kinney and Stephen Spaccarelli both make 21st century art that combines sculpture and painting traditions. Both take familiar objects such as a bucket, a piece of slate, a beautiful piece of wood and recontextualize them to reveal insights into the relationship between the human and the natural. Todd Spire is more overt in his conceptual approach, often bringing a political dimension to his witty mindbenders.
Politics is not far from the foreground of the work of Richard Deon, Norm Magnusson, Armand Rusillon and Ilse Schreiber-Noll though each transcends the limitations of political art. Deon's massive painting can be seen as a humorous commentary on the exploitation of nature. Ilse Schrieber-Noll and Armand Rusillon offer painterly elegies to nature abused by human ignorance. Norm Magnusson optimistically appeals to our better side with the first of his allegorical celebrations of America's Virtues.
Rounding out the show, are D. Dominick Lombardi and Terry Rowlett who are hardto categorize, highly accomplished artists. Lombardi will be showing his older landscape paintings made new with the imposition of his recent postapocalyptic tattoos. Rowlett presents a mysterious, distinctly urban figure on a local path and also perhaps, on the path of spiritual enlightenment.
Van Brunt Gallery, located at 460 Main Street in Beacon, is open Thursdays - Mondays from 11am to 6pm. The gallery can be reached by e-mail at info@vanbruntgallery.com, by phone at 845-838-2995.
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