
“Human Figure,” an exhibition featuring works by Jamie Bowman, Holly Curcio, Erika Hess, Lavaughan Jenkins, Jessica Liggero and Tamar Nelson, artists that use the human figure expressively, “going beyond verisimilitude in order to express inner life through outward appearance,” opens on September 1 and continues through November 8 at the Hess Gallery at Pine Manor College, Annenberg Library, 400 Heath St., Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. “They create powerful images of humans for as many reasons as there are artists: to represent an idealized state, to get at the heart of what it is to see and be seen, to look in the mirror and discover what today’s emotional landscape reveals.”
Featuring the artwork of Betsy Silverman (lively cityscapes), Suzanne Hodes (expressionist inspired landscapes), and Robert Steinem (microscopic detailed natural paintings), “Refracted Visions” opens September 4 and runs until October 16 at Three Stones Gallery, 115 Commonwealth Ave., Concord, Massachusetts. “Just as ordinary sunlight, when refracted, unfurls into an astonishing rainbow of colors, the artists featured in ‘Refracted Visions’ reveal distinctive and refreshing representational styles.” The show’s artist reception takes place on Thursday, September 19 from 6-8 p.m.
Nearly 100 objects of Buddhist ritual art, many rarely seen in the West, will be on view during “Dharma and Punya: Buddhist Ritual Art of Nepal” from September 5 through December 14 at Cantor Gallery at the College of the Holy Cross, One College St., Worcester, Massachusetts. “Among the objects on view will be rare manuscripts from as early as the 11th century, a magnificent Vajracharya priest’s crown from the 13th century, stupas, paintings and a colossal 19-foot-long narrative scroll depicting scenes from the Svayambhupurāna from the late 18th early 19th century.” Over a dozen related lectures and gallery talks are scheduled.
Featuring Jeannie Motherwell’s latest collection of abstract paintings, “IMPACT,” on view from September 6 through 30 at M Fine Arts Galerie, 460 Harrison Ave. #C24, Boston, Massachusetts, spotlights her new works in acrylic and sometimes ink on clay boards, “a fine porcelain surface upon which saturated hues spill, swirl and seep, with rich contours feathering out into delicious white space.” The show’s press release equivocates seeing the works with exploring the bottom of the ocean: “From this soft base, pillars rise again in citrine, sea-green, teal and royal blue like the bastions of some subaquatic kingdom. Yet the hulking verticality of the composition creates a vague sense of foreboding, casting an ominous patina over the scene.” One thing is for sure: Motherwell’s SoWa exhibitions have been special events.
“Unredacted,” a multi-media exhibition featuring work by Peter Howells, Diane Jacobs, Michael Miller, Melissa Morris, Dorota Mytych, Tereza Swanda and Angela Rose Volugarelis, runs from September 7 through October 19 at Reach Arts, 89 Burrill St., Swampscott, Massachusetts. “As a group, we are working with the following themes: gender and economic inequality, violence against women and children, migration as a means of potential political asylum, destructive thoughts that perpetuate social and political division, as well as the collapse of hierarchical cultural structures. Acknowledging the political post-truth world we now live in, as artists and activists, we aim to shine a light on sustained inequities and offer more humane alternatives.”
Throughout the summer, the Berta Walker Gallery, 208 Bradford St., Provincetown, Massachusetts, has been spotlighting “Creative Couples: 1899-Present.” The final installment, which runs through September 14, pairs works by Hans and Miz Hofmann and Paul and Blair Resika with a group exhibition of students of Hofmann and Resika plus a surprise installation by Varujan Boghosian.
“Art on Two Wheels,” an extraordinary exhibit of Harley-Davidson motorcycles and motorcycle art from the collection of David McGraw, who has worked for decades to acquire and restore iconic Harleys and other fine machines, “including some so rare that even Harley-Davidson does not own them,” opens on September 20 and remains on view through November 24, 2019, the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, 307 Old Main St., South Yarmouth, Massachusetts. “We can’t wait to open our doors to people from all over the world who love motorcycles and see them as beautiful examples of ingenuity, artistic design and America’s love of the open road,” said executive director Robert Nash.
Containing over 110 works spanning from the 1840s to today, “Expanded Field,” which is on view through September 29, is one of the “most extensive photography surveys” in the history of the New Britain Museum of American Art, 56 Lexington St., New Britain, Connecticut. “Providing a chronological overview of American photography, beginning with some of the early pioneers of daguerreotypes, tin types, direct glass plate positives, collotypes and gelatin silver prints,” Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Louis Stettner, Larry Fink and Garry Winogrand are amongst the photographers showcased.
For its 2019 North American Print Biennial, the Boston Printmakers invited Shelley Langdale, recently appointed as curator and head of the Department of Modern Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery, to review the 1700 prints submitted for the show and to organize the exhibition that features 105 artists. She said the show shows “an increased focus on divisive social, political and cultural issues — racism, immigration, climate change and sexism — heightened by escalated tensions in the current political climate.” The exhibition is on view through September 29 at the Jewett Art Gallery at Wellesley College, 106 Central St., Wellesley, Massachusetts.
“In Between: The Outsider Art of Ruby C. Williams,” which features the work of the self-taught Bealsville, Florida folk artist, farmer, minster and grandmother, is a rare opportunity to see a solo show of visionary art as most of the artists are based in the south. “She took up painting in the early 1980s to pass the time while waiting for customers at her family’s produce stand along Florida’s State Road 60. Over the last three decades, her brightly colored signs, rich with folk wisdom and observations of daily life, have drawn in just as many visitors as the vegetables and pies they advertise.” The exhibition runs through October 5 at Mystic Museum of Art, 9 Water St., Mystic, Connecticut, coinciding with MMoA’s 63rd Regional Exhibition and “Linda DiFrenna: Life, Death, and In Between,” a series of mixed media works and manipulated photographs.
Sculptor Domenic Esposito first made loud waves last June when he placed a large spoon installation in front of Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Connecticut, and gained international attention this past April when he installed a similar work in front of the headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration in Washington, D.C., during protests against what opioid activists perceive to be government inaction against the opioid crisis. That work, the “FDA Spoon,” will be in Boston from October 10 through 24 in front of Boston University’s George Sherman Union, 775 Commonwealth Ave.
“Subject Matters: Sebastian Martorana in Sculpture,” the Baltimore-based artist’s first solo museum exhibition in New England, is on view through October 31 at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, 543 Shore Rd., Ogunquit, Maine. Working primarily in marble, Martorana “often works from observation, sculpting from life using tools fabricated to achieve the required effect over the surface of stone. Where elements of his work appear forthright and effortless, they are in fact the result of a skillful approach to artistic traditions, reveling in passages of texture, pattern, volume and form that are by turns humorous, familiar and politically-charged.”