Wednesday, December 06, 2006

a synchronicity of palettes…




[work of jordon schranz, including “the line/red rover” (2006) 60” x 48” oil on canvas & the fury (2005) 10” x 8" oil on canvas ]
[abstracts by nicole laemmle & portraits by zito]
[top: work by domenick dipietrantonio & michael antkowiak/bottom: work by marissa r. shell & henry chung]
[top: view outside the studio & work by joan reutershan/bottom: work by corina coria & jennifer cushman]

scores of artists in the crane street studios community of long island city showcased their work at open studios on december 2 and 3. with work traversing myriad media, textures, and contexts, these artists opened their doors to the general community for an exuberant weekend of cultural dimensions. while much of the work exhibited was interesting—in tones conveying irony to rootedness as well as whimsy—what follows are but a few examples of what goes on in this long island city powerhouse.

her paintings conveying imaginary worlds in bright colors, marissa r. shell melds elements of macro and micro worlds together in proportionate scale. mostly done with acrylic on canvas, shell’s paintings reveal microsystems and the structure of our geography and architecture.

broaching—if not synthesizing—the media of sculpture and painting and perspectives of figurative, abstract, and conceptual, domenick dipietrantonio combines found synthetic objects with natural materials in a dialectic on contemporary culture and its sturm und drang.

merciless in conveying today’s ever-starker options, the work of jordon schranz brings to bear the persons and objects caught up in our maelstrom. reduced to their common denominator—without room for obfuscation—his pieces dissect the collective vacillations and dissonance of vox populi.

conjuring and culling visages from narratives suggested by artifacts, zito uses paint to communicate the emotional capacity of the human face. his portraits—at the intersection of object and illusion—convey root testimony that alloy individuals with their origins, history, and point of contact with the artist.

how elements of architecture, street patterns, the urban forest, and other features of the city evolve are of special interest to joan reutershan, author of “clara zetkin und brot und rosen.” reutershan transposes some of the visual configurations that present themselves to her perceptions into the colors, lines, and shapes of paint space. what results from this process can be seen in her lush oil-on-canvas scenes of fort greene.

while the vine sculptures and mixed media collages of jennifer cushman intrigue and delight, both viscerally and intellectually, the abstract acrylic paintings of nicole laemmle are remarkable for their wavelength and amplitude. then there are the wonderful black and white pastilles of henry chung that capture the crevices between still life. analyzing existential questions inherent with essence, substance, time, location, space, and identity, robert walden addresses these ideas by building upon physical, temporal, and literal metaphors in his ontological road maps. projecting an intensity that represent an array of psychological states, the paintings of mundane domestic interiors by michael antkowiak are rendered in acidic yellow tones, imbuing this work with a murky past-tense quality.

open studios captured the deep hues of creative firmament in new york despite varying economic and situational challenges. it would be advisable to keep abreast of events like this at crane street studios and combine a visit there with glimpses into the work at p.s. 1 across the street.

http://www.craneststudios.org/

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