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Artscope Magazine | May/June 2021

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Collage

WORKING PAPER: TODD BARTEL AND JACK MASSEY AT HERA GALLERY

// Artscope Online, Current Exhibits, Visual Arts

by J. Fatima Martins

As expected from the complex minds of Todd Bartel and Jack Massey comes “working PAPER,” an exhibition that counterpoints two visually different styles of collage art, that are the same in their intellectually challenging requirement. In “working PAPER,” Bartel presents his signature mode — substantially worked, layered, beautiful and soulful vintage papers from a variety of literary sources requiring focused and physical reading from the viewer, while Massey does the opposite — engage the viewer with emotive minimalism with carefully and simply collaged mixed media, also worked papers, requiring playfulness and calm contemplation. Bartel bombards the reader with real physical content, while Massey hits his viewers with open-ended questions. Overall, the exhibition theme is landscape: external for Bartel, through direct connective points; internal for Massey, with subtle and private … [Read more...] about WORKING PAPER: TODD BARTEL AND JACK MASSEY AT HERA GALLERY

ESKIN AT GALATEA: FINDING ABSTRACT LANDING SPACE

// Artscope Online, Current Issue, Exhibits, Featured, Featured, September/October 2019, Visual Arts

by James Foritano

Barbara Eskin professes to chart disasters without a leg to stand on —  multiple disasters, pieces flying everywhere. Before you think about her person — “What a pessimist!” and about her art: “What a downer!” — listen to some history. Eskin was born in Germany during the waning years of the Second World War. She was taken out of Germany by her parents when still a toddler, and then before she came to America, 20-some years ago, she was a resident of multiple European countries where she picked up a taste for languages and literature. A teacher by vocation and a canny European by upbringing, she has strong opinions which rarely veer towards the dogmatic, and, if they do, find little landing place. I’m looking at “In Pieces (4)” — a dynamo of vectors strong enough to bend its frame — yet all within a boundary of 24 x 30 inches. Perhaps boundaries are as good a concept as any to … [Read more...] about ESKIN AT GALATEA: FINDING ABSTRACT LANDING SPACE

  DOUGLAS BREAULT: SOFT FOCUS AT FORT POINT ARTS COMMUNITY MAIN GALLERY

// Artscope Online, Featured, Visual Arts

by J. Fatima Martins

On view now through August 5, eight mixed media collage works, including a sculpture, by Douglas Breault, are featured in “Soft Focus,” an exhibition at the Fort Point Arts Community Main Gallery showing some of the best approaches to contemporary conceptual art happening right now. The works on view are a perfect blending of physicality and intellectualism. Breault is a visual composer of subtle narratives, at first appearing completely abstract engaging only form and materials, but then slowly revealing poignant, mysterious and poetic stories. For Breault, the art arrives from a place of realism. From a solid place, he allows the materials themselves to express their true rawness and emotive situations to live and expand out, transmuting into unexpected ideas. What appears as happenstance and chaos is organized, purposeful and planned. From physical real points, Breault then pushes … [Read more...] about   DOUGLAS BREAULT: SOFT FOCUS AT FORT POINT ARTS COMMUNITY MAIN GALLERY

Unfoldingobject at Concord Center for the Visual Arts

// Artscope Online, Featured, Visual Arts

by J. Fatima Martins

On view now through August 11 at the Concord Center for the Visual Arts, “unfoldingobject” collage is a formidable exhibition, featuring the work of 50 artists, presenting an expansive understanding of what collage art is physically as well as conceptually while also highlighting the meaning of uncollage. Curated by collage artist, writer and intellectual, Todd Bartel, who is also a participating artist, the collection of works on view range from standard cut-and-paste on flat surfaces to three-dimensional forms of collage-layering and three-dimensional assemblage and sculpture, and painting, that takes on collage as a style. “unfoldingobject is a neologism created to describe the quality in a particular work of art that provokes discovery upon each encounter,” Bartel writes in the curator’s statement. “Despite the ceaseless innovation that it provides, collage is often overlooked or … [Read more...] about Unfoldingobject at Concord Center for the Visual Arts

UNIFYING A CREATIVE CITY: THIS YEAR’S NEWTON OPEN STUDIOS

// Artscope Online, Exhibits, Featured, News

by Isabel Barbi

On April 6 and 7, the first beautiful weekend of the spring season, the city of Newton, Massachusetts, hosted their annual Newton Open Studios event. Now in its 22nd year, the event brought in over 150 artists showing and selling their work at 45 locations across the city. Host locations included the Newton City Hall, First Baptist Church in Newton Centre and various studios and homes, sharing spaces and showing their dedication their community. These locations, many of which are historic, were all marked by red balloons outside of the entrances. Beyond getting to know and explore the artists’ work, attendees were able to experience the love that Newton’s residents have for their city. These pop up exhibits and sales showed the creativity the people of Newton have to bring to the Boston area. Newton City Hall provided information about the event as you walked in the doors past the … [Read more...] about UNIFYING A CREATIVE CITY: THIS YEAR’S NEWTON OPEN STUDIOS

Artscope’s Nancy Nesvet (right) and artist Maryam Palizgir (left) with her archival pigment print series, “Epiphany,” 2018, at “Material Culture,” Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York.

Creativity to Enlightenment: Material Culture at Elga Wimmer Gallery

// Artscope Online, Exhibits, Featured, Visual Arts

by Nancy Nesvet

“Material Culture,” curated by Roya Khadjavi, on view from April 4 until April 18, 2019 at Elga Wimmer Gallery PCC in New York City’s Chelsea District features five Iranian-born artists now working in the United States: Aida Izadpanah; Dana Nehdaran; Maryam Khosrovani; Mayam Palizgir and Massy Nasser Ghandi. Providing a window into the history of Persian art forms, they appropriate the language of Persian miniatures and Chinese landscape painting and spatial orientation. They contemporize traditions of Persian art in new and creative ways while retaining and respecting age-old Persian forms. My walk around the gallery began with Massy Nasser Ghandi’s dark landscape paintings on porcelain, “An Interpretation of the Horizon.” Variegated colors, browns and blacks in images of land visible at night and white waves full of air holes laying on a blue-grey sea composed realistic but … [Read more...] about Creativity to Enlightenment: Material Culture at Elga Wimmer Gallery