Day in the life

Yesterday seemed to exemplify a typical day for an artist in New York City. We began with a visit to the studio of Davide Cantoni. Davide briefly described to us how he began his career as an artist with a series of "Tongue Paintings," and talked about the current projects he is working on. Davide's Paintings, created using interference paint, were mind-blowing. Initially they looked like washed out under-paintings, but as soon as any of us moved, changing our perspective, the image also changed. The image would become a negative, disappear all together, or change intensity in terms of color. No photographs of Davide's paintings would do them justice; they need to be experienced first hand to be fully appreciated and understood.































We next visited the the Josee Bienvenu Gallery, which was exhibiting the work of Kenneth Solomon. Kenny talked to us about his work similarly to Davide. Kenny's work seemed to be based on the idea of everything ultimately being connected. His watercolor renditions of Google images search pages connected by a similar image to one another exemplified this idea. Kenny's precise, detailed handling of the watercolor medium in these pieces was very impressive.






























Next up was the Jonathan Levine Gallery, exhibiting the work of Eric White, Nicola Verlato, and Fulvio Di Piazza. Here our group discussed the notion of "high brow" vs. "low brow" art. Though Marc has coined the term "uni-brow," maintaining that all art art is actually connected (is this sounding familiar?), the art we saw here would probably be labeled "low brow." Illustrative, figurative, and graphic influences were easily seen in these pop-culture influenced works.










































Our epic day ended with a number of exhibition openings. At the Ricco Maresco Gallery, a gallery specializing in self taught and "outside" artists, a series of work entitled "Villages," by Ben Hutchkiss was showcased.

Joan Linder's opening at Mixed Greens was incredible. Joan's pen and ink, extremely intricate and detailed drawings were enchanting. Especially striking was a glass table littered with hand rendered replicas of numerous and diverse pieces of mail. Some of these pieces were even double sided, encouraging viewers to get under the table and look at the underside of the various letters, envelopes, and bills.














Lastly, I would like to briefly comment on Patrick Lee's ultra realistic graphite drawings of previous gang members shown at the Ameringer McEnery Yohe Gallery. These drawings looked like large photographs rather than graphite drawings. The portraits were extremely striking due to their delicate and intimate nature, creating a very interesting duality and even irony as these images depict individuals who have committed crimes, including murder.