Ernest Concepcion, Power Nap, 2011
January 12 – February 19, 2012
VIP Sneak Peak: Wednesday, January 11, 6-8 p.m
Opening: Thursday, January 12, 6–8 p.m
Fran Hill Gallery
285 Rushton Road
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6C 2X5
Tel: 416-363-1333
Email: franhillgallery@bellnet.ca
Hours: Fri – Sun 11-6 p.m or by appointment
Fran Hill Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition entitled “In The End A Good Story Is All That Remains Eight New York Artists Figuratively Speaking.
Curated by Edward Rubin.
The exhibition features the recent work of eight “story telling” New York City based artists, each one unique in their focus, concerns, and manner of presentation. While much art on view today is about spectacle and requires 3 seconds to both digest and forget, the art and artists in “A Good Story” linger lovingly, as well as imaginatively, on the wonders of everyday life, the so-called intricate workings of the world around us. The age of the artists in this exhibition range from the young and emerging, to mid-career and old master, the latter in a neo classical sense.
A few of the highlights are Ernest Concepcion’s conflict-based World War ll paintings. Which bring to mind early black and white war films from the late 40s, the twist being the addition of Max Ernst-like surrealist interventions mixed with scenes from the artist’s own life.
Mary Hrbacek’s anthropomorphic tree-portraits, from her series Entwined, fuse human and tree anatomy into a hybrid essence whose varied tree forms – hollowed out, hallowed, haunted, and inhabited – accentuate the unity of all life.
Rendered in Dutch Baroque style, Heidi Johnson’s paintings are filled, from top to bottom, with the visual history of just about every species and specimen imaginable. Her work parodies the anxiety, as well as the exhilaration that is triggered by an overabundance of information that comes to us through the computer, the print industry and media.
Lori Nelson’s narratives, with their mixture of fairytale magic and psychological facts, are miniature worlds. No unlike Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine, Nelson’s figurative paintings consist of a solitary person, deep in thought, surrounded by a world that is too much for them.
The intimate paintings of Jason Stopa depict landscape as a site of mysterious and phenomenal occurrences. His enigmatic washed out scenes, which focus on a time of day or season, mine the intersection between memory and reality.
Scott Walden’s color photographs, in shades of Caravaggio, document the architecture as well as the people who frequent the bars, legion halls, and community centers in a once wealthy but now economically depressed region of rural Newfoundland.
Underscoring the fragility of the oceans’ half-billion year old ecosystem, Ejay Weiss’ series of seascape paintings, taking us back to our very beginnings, as well as our possible ending, express how paint both mirrors and recapitulates the evolving world as a harmonious and self-sustaining idea.
Combining gestural marks with a unique type of curved perspective, Steve Zolin’s work investigates the structure of space and reality. His explorations flow from painting to drawing and back again, in an ongoing process of artistic evolution.
Edward Rubin (Curator) is a New York based writer, curator, visual artist, and consummate world traveler covering art news here and abroad. His writings have appeared in such magazines as Art & Antiques, ArtUS, dART International, Canadian Art, ArtNexus, Flash Art, Hispanic Outlook, NYArts, and Sculpture Magazines, as well as online at www.artesmagazine.com and www.HUMA3.com. His photographs and collages have been exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and at numerous New York City art galleries. Currently his work, part of an exhibition titled NYC/International Perspectives, has been traveling throughout Russia, Germany, Hungary and France for the past two years. He is an active member of the prestigious International Association of Art Critics.
Special Thanks to Fran Hill, Steve Rockwell, Leon Rooke, Barbara McGivern, dART International Magazine, The Lab Gallery (New York City), Rupert Ravens Contemporary (Newark, New Jersey), Dinter Fine Art (New York City), and www.artists-studios.com the only existing, artist based, website founded and run by real live art critics.