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Aucocisco Gallery
613 Congress Street
Portland, Maine
November 5 through 29
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PARTERRE:
AN INSTALLATION
BY LAUREN FENSTERSTOCK
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Bowdoin College Museum of Art
9400 College Station
Brunswick, Maine
Aucocisco Gallery owner Andres Verzosa is often seen looking up from his desk to exchange greetings with familiar Portlanders passing by on the sidewalk. His dog Arrow has become an equally loved and regular fixture of Portland, perched in his favorite window of the 1928 building. Verzosa, who prefers to simply to be called Andy, has operated Aucocisco since returning to his native Portland in 2000, after living and working in New York City. The gallery fills three consecutive storefronts in the historic Congress Street Building, or State Theater Building, in the heart of Portland’s Arts District.
In November, Aucocisco showcases work by three exceptional artists. Skowhegan-trained and Maine native Dozier Bell’s work was recently shown as part of the “Transcendent and Sublime” group exhibit at Connecticut’s Sacred Heart University Gallery of Contemporary Art. The Gallery invited four artists to explore concepts of the transcendent and sublime, which the exhibit’s accompanying essay defines as “extreme states that exist beyond the limits of ordinary comprehension.” In celebration of the new University Chapel, the artists were asked to explore these concepts and their meanings in modern day society. Bell’s haunting large-scale acrylic paintings reflect the enormity of space and the suffocating feeling of stretching darkness, intermittently broken up by the illumination of stars and galaxies.
In October, Bell participated in New York City’s famed Art Students League’s “Art From Anxious Times” group show. Her work was viewed alongside