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Stanford Kay, D. Dominick Lombardi And Stephen Niccolls At Van Brunt Gallery
Telling stories with pictures is at the heart of a new exhibition of paintings, works on paper and sculpture by three artists opening at Van Brunt Gallery Saturday, April 7th.
Stanford Kay returns to the gallery with new pieces from his "Gutenberg Variations," D. Dominick Lombardi is showing richly varied examples of his Post Apocalyptic Tattoo Series and Stephen Niccolls is presenting painterly abstract explorations of memory and dreams.
Gallery visitors will remember Stanford Kay's acrylic paintings of books on shelves, which deftly balance the seemingly contradictory languages of representation and abstraction. Kay's earlier book paintings told the story of their own making in the language of gesture, color and texture. His new depictions of vertical piles of books add the vocabulary of figuration.
Kay states that "The stacked 'books' and canvases feel like… people. Books represent vessels of experiences and the vertical stacking is like the measure of a person, their accumulated knowledge and experiences." With the height and posture of standing figures, these paintings are like portraits of friends telling you about the books they love and thus telling you about themselves.
D. Dominick Lombardi is both an artist and a writer. He is a kind and generous person and so it is a bit surprising that his art depicts a dark vision of a world in which " we are all guinea pigs in an experiment fueled by powerful industries." Populating Lombardi's drawings, paintings and sculptures are a cast of very unfortunate characters depicted through the eyes of an end-of-days tattoo artist who sees all around him, "devasted life forms that endure some of the most difficult physical circumstances." The bleakness of this vision is softened somewhat by the brightly colored cartoon-like style of the figures and the beauty and care with which they have been rendered.
Stephen Niccolls believes that abstraction gives him the freedom to allude to more than is possible with representation. His small gouaches and larger oil paintings are multi-referential, touching on personal memories, the fractured sequence and structure of dreams and sensations not easily pictured, such as aromas. Color is of paramount importance in his work, evoking atmosphere and mood, creating a sense of space and the events that happen within it.
Niccolls tells his tales like a masterful jazz musician. He improvises, drawing upon years of experience perfecting his art.
Van Brunt Gallery is at 460 Main Street, Beacon, NY. Gallery hours are Thursdays through Mondays from 11am to 6pm or by appointment. The gallery website is:
www.vanbruntgallery.com.
Further information can be obtained by calling 845-838- 2995 or by e-mailing:
carl@vanbruntgallery.com.
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