Terence Falk’s Documentational Abstracts

Terence Falk’s Documentational Abstracts

In his first solo show with Robert Berry Gallery, Connecticut-based abstract and found still life photographer Terence Falk’s intriguing and documentational, almost evaluational, photographs of the world taken with a large format camera. They’re about the natural world, but break it down into abstract shapes and form, evoking the viewer to slow down and rethink the world right around them. There is beautify and mystery right around us; it just takes a keen eye to find it. The artist has done just that.

Falk’s first passion as an amateur zoology thrived due to his observant nature. He minded snakes, butterflies, flatworms, and anything else that caught his fancy, and learned to observe them on a macro level through a microscope. He taught himself about every species of animal that lived at the shoreline near his home, and the nearby ponds and streams. At sixteen, photography entered his life, and has served to reaffirm the natural connection to the natural world that he felt since he was six, albeit on a more introspective level. He wanted to continue discovering the world, but even though the tools are different, the passion for observing has never ceased. In 1976, he bought a Lindholf 4” x 5” view camera, since he was drawn to subjects that beckoned a slower, more intense process of photographing. The artist was right back where he started observing the world through a microscope, but now armed with a camera and documentarian approach.

*Remains to Be Seen*, Installation view, 2022

Falk received his BFA in photograph at the University of Bridgeport in 1977. In 1986, the artist was awarded an Artist Residency Fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Sweet Briar, Virginia and in 1996 he received The Weir Farm Visiting Artist Fellowship. His … Click here to read more

Luis Cortez

Reality is a Constant Becoming

Luis Cortés, a sculptor from Zaragoza who lives in Barcelona, has spent years investigating movement through his articulated sculptures, a series made up mostly of small minimalist sculptures with pure shapes, representing different animals, such as the horse, the elephant, or the whale. However, he has also studied the human figure and the hand. In Luis Cortés’ sculptures, you can observe a part of scientific research, and the artist investigates movement carefully. Each of his sculptures is made with a different number of wooden pieces, all of them with geometric shapes. These pieces are linked together through pivot points, thus allowing movement.

In Barcelona, Spain, the presence of exceptional creativity and imagination is around every corner, where artists like Gaudi, Picasso, Miro, and Dali once resided. I was lucky enough to visit Luis Cortes’ art studio, where I wandered around like a child in a Toyland. I was fascinated by his geometrical jigsaw puzzles that turn into motion sculptures.

Animals, plants and ultimately all living beings are important examples of morphological changes, their displacement, and relationships with other beings, based on their intentions, instinct, and intelligence.

– Luis Cortez

Luis Cortes went to school at Facultat de Belles Arts, Universitat de Barcelona (The Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona) and was initially trained as a filmmaker. Throughout his career, he has made a living as a special effects maker for motion pictures and commercials. Eventually, the evolution of sculptures made with kinetic chains captured his mind. He devoted his focus to it as he became a full-time artist. Over the last ten years, he has applied polygons’ continuous lines and rigid elements to create various figures through endless detailed calculations of multiple pivot … Click here to read more

Kim25

Artist Q&A with Kim 25

In 2020, Kim25 began exploring the duality of the ‘boundary of undecidability’ that lies between inside and out, and sought to capture this complicated relationship. with her work “The Truth of Mystery.” In 2021 “The Truth of Mystery” series reveals its shape as the figure of the text at the point where inside and outside, inner world and outside reality, correspond. What is remarkable in her painting is that the undecidability of the boundary that belongs to both inside and outside turns into the very (textual, perhaps inter-textual) substance; the undecidability of the boundary becomes, through the artist’s kiasmatic logic, the boundary of undecidability that re-doubles the boundary and the object(s) and thus problematizes the boundariness of the boundary. Kim25’s poetic imagination that manifests itself on her canvas not only gives a new sense of aesthetics through which viewers can communicate with the newly expressed reality, but also facilitates the invitation to various interpretative participations.

“Meet of Each Other – L’éternité & Rimbaud”, oil on canvas, 32 x 46 in | 80 x 117 cm (each panel), 2021

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

My favorite artists of all time are Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, and Julian Schnabel.

How did you become a professional artist?

I was always friends with art and painting. Ever since I was born and had strength in my hands, I always played with drawing utensils. Painting is a fickle friend I meet every day.

What are the influences and inspirations in your work?

I am influenced by words from literature. On a gloomy day, looking out the window at the scarlet red sunset, I imagine the red sea. I think of the fate of the sea and how it becomes a mirror for the sky, mixed altogether and … Click here to read more

Kurt Lightner

Artist Q&A with Kurt Lightner

Kurt Lightner was born in Troy, Ohio. He received his BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design, OH, and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts, NYC.

Lightner’s works have been included in many significant group and solo exhibitions; Greater New York, PS1 MOMA, Kurt Lightner: Five Acres, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Queens International, Queens Museum, Other Worlds, Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, and A View almost Picturesque and Slow Dissolve, Clementine Gallery. Lightner’s works have been critically reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, Artnews, Freize, Beautiful Decay, Brooklyn Rail, New York Times, The New Yorker, Sculpture, and the Village Voice, among others.

He has been a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and The Headlands Center for the Arts Project Studio Residency in San Fransisco. Lightner’s works are included in many private and public collections both nationally and internationally.

He currently lives and works in Queens, New York.

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

Of all Time? That’s tough.

My favorites ebb and flow but here are a few that always stick in my mind. Charles Burchfield, David Milne, Early Vuillard, Lois Dodd, Alice Neel, William H. Johnson, Giorgio Morandi, Edvard Munch, Jacob Lawrence, William Hawkins, Arlene Shechet, Millet, Van Gogh, Horace Pippin, and Peter Doig. Not necessarily in that order.

“Planting Lesson”, acrylic on canvas, 98 x 70 in | 249 x 177 cm, 2021

How did you become a professional artist?

Since I was a child, I was always using my hands creating, making, growing something. I grew up in a small town in a farming community out in the country pretty isolated until I could drive. This environment allowed for a lot of time to find ways to entertain myself. I would draw and go on made up “archeological … Click here to read more

Willie Cole

The Future of Art: Willie Cole, a contemporary artist creating unique work and positive change.

Willie Cole has been making innovative work with unique iconography for over half a century, but talking to him, he sounds like a friendly, smart colleague or neighbor next store. Perhaps that’s why his work is so accessible and inspirational.

The artist, who lives in Mine Hill, NJ, has been the subject of shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998), Bronx Museum of the Arts (2001), and Miami Art Museum (2001). These institutions, some of the biggest in the world, along with private collectors from New York to Los Angeles, see something provocative in his work.

When Art Review City caught up with him, the artist invited us to a visit his home studio where he was finishing the works for the collective exhibition “There’s There There,” curated by renowned American artist Rashid Johnson at blue-chip gallery Hauser and Wirth’s Southampton location. This show invites visitors to reflect upon the pleasures and complex histories of the shapes, movements, and objects that permeate the everyday, and Cole’s ironing board works are clearly the stars of the show.

Installation view, ‘There’s There There’, Hauser & Wirth Southampton, 2021. © Hauser & Wirth. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Thomas Barratt.

The artist has spent a lifetime working to look at thing differently than most artists. He is most concerned with recycling, green energy, and living a healthy and spiritual life to live at one with Mother Earth. He spent many of his early days in a pew at Sunday School, and later studied Buddhism in high school and college, but today he says he is a “no-frills nature worshipper” which explains a lot about him as a man and as an artist. “Nature, no matter what you call it, is powerful, and it deserves to be admired … Click here to read more

Gregory Thielker

Artist Q&A with Gregory Thielker

Movement, territory, and memory shape the work of artist Gregory Thielker. He uses drawing and painting, as well as sound and installation, to unpack perceptions and narratives of specific places. Hyperrealistic representation serves as a tool for a slow, meticulous transcription of the physical sites, as well as documentation of the artist’s contact with each place. His images reveal a critical glance, give pause for contemplation, and allow memory to affect our impressions. He has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad. Gregory currently lives in Switzerland.

“Remainder”, oil on linen, 34 x 50 in | 86 x 127cm, 2019

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

If I have to pick one who has continued to inspire me it would be Gerhard Richter.

How did you become a professional artist?

I have always loved art, but for most of my days in school, I tried hard to do other things. Eventually, the feeling that I needed to be an artist won out. And now I can’t imagine not making art.

What are the influences and inspirations in your work?

I am inspired and challenged by what I see around me. I think this started when I began to paint en plein air, and after I pulled out a canvas, that moment of paralysis when I had to decide how and why I was painting what I saw. For better or worse, I have moved around a lot too; living in New York and different cities in the US, to India, Bulgaria, and now Switzerland. It’s not easy to arrive in a new place, but I think that painting and drawing give me the means to understand how I see things. There is a saying I believe about India: that when you first arrive, you feel like you can … Click here to read more

Ned Martin “Spirits Through Time”

The Duality of Ned Martin

Ned Martin created a dual style presentation that features both sides of his personality in “Spirits Through Time,” his second solo exhibition with Robert Berry Gallery, and challenges the viewer to contemplate the notion of time, the balance of humanity, and to reflect on the state of the world in these 15 new works mostly painted in the past few months during his unexpected quarantine in South America.

There are two parts to the show: the abstracted landscapes that Martin has been working on over the last few years, and the new portrait paintings combining elements of abstraction and figuration. To anyone who has been following the artist over the last four decades, you’ll know that he was classically trained at the Schuler School of Fine Art, and to this day still mixes his own colors and always builds his own painting surfaces to ensure that he has full control over every element that goes into his work.

For the last few years, he has used reclaimed aluminum printing plates on which to create his landscape works. The metal plates were originally used to print tabloid stories and advertising, which tend to be disposed after a few uses since there are remnants of images and text. The artists states that, “All of that imagery, paired with the landscape work, creates a sense of beauty mixed with commercial messages.” It’s the juxtaposition of the natural beauty of the landscape imagery that is combined with consumerism which is the driving force behind a lot of Americans that creates such a powerful dynamic. Martin also discusses his background of living in rural Pennsylvania on a farm, and his recent passion for camping, which has changed how he relates to nature compared to … Click here to read more

Hiroshi Senju “Beginnings”

Hiroshi Senju’s Polar Opposites

Everything can be divided between polar opposites, dark and light, good and bad, night and day, yin and yang, etc. That can also be said of Hiroshi Senju’s return to waterfall imagery in his “Beginnings” exhibition across Sundaram Tagore’s two New York locations on 27^th Street in Chelsea and Madison Avenue in the Upper East Side.

After seeing Senju’s blacklight installation in Singapore in 2016, the beauty and immediacy of his work has been on this critic’s radar ever since. There is something both calming and frenetic about moving water, and he is able to capture the picturesque moment like a photographer would, while creating movement and energy like the Futurists did. The high contrast of black and white pigments in his waterfall pieces has always been one their strongpoints, and in these new paintings, that continues to be the case. Although, there are a few canvases with blue backgrounds that are similar in tone and vibrancy to the blacklight, where white pigments appear when illuminated. It is these blue canvases, alongside a few red background works that really showcase what new colors can do to an artist’s work.

Compare them to the paintings of Italian ZERO artists Enrico Castellani and Lucio Fontana where subtle changes in the artist’s palette have significant and lasting changes to the work. By completely changing the color, Senju has augmented the contrast between the water and the earth, reducing the polar opposite of black and white in his other paintings. The color becomes more of a focus, just as the flat red of a Fontana sets the stage for the violent cut that the artist performs to the canvas. Whereas Senju adds the lighter white pigments to soften the work, creating an assemblance of harmony in each work.

In … Click here to read more