Opinion
The New Profusion on Main Street
By Jennifer Landes
(02/04/2010) It’s always nice when people or things exceed
“Henry Allingham,” a 2009 mixed-media work by Graham Loper, is a portrait of a man who at his death was verified as the oldest living man in the world. |
your expectations. Having regular art shows return to Main Street in East Hampton is one example.
Tiffany & Company has been exhibiting East End artists for a while, Bernard Goldberg has moved into a space on Newtown and Main, and intermittent shows have been part of Elie Tahari’s presentations. Recently the Mayfair jewelry shop gave up one of its spaces on Main Street for the showing of art.
At Tiffany it is the work of “the Salt Queen,” Bettina Werner, that serves as a backdrop for diamonds, other precious and semiprecious stones, silver, and gold. Chosen for the space by Eiman Aziz for a show she calls “Crystals of the Winter Sea,” the jewel-like colors and metallic treatments of the pieces are at just the right pitch for the otherwise sedate surroundings. Their sculptural quality also befits the cases and display areas of the store. The whole experience of the art and retail space is practically seamless, but Ms. Werner does manage to steal the show with the scale and color of her works.
Her process, which appears to be proprietary, yields color-saturated grains and pebbles that are used often over several canvases to achieve an overall effect.
The titles for the abstracted works are often very allusive, such as the intensely hued “Water Mill Sun” or red-pigmented works that all seem to hint at love or romance.
Two works called “Salt More Precious Than Gold” play with the textural aspects of Ms. Werner’s work. In these two gold compositions, she varies the texture from large and coarse to smaller and finer grains. The effect of light on the material and its presence in the work is dramatically apparent. Even the shape of the grains does much for the flow and feel of the pieces.
But even in the metallic works, color is absorptive rather than reflective, giving them an internal rather than external radiance.
The pieces often seem so pristine and untouched by human hands that when the artist incorporates a sign of her interaction with them, as in the kiss she implies with a lip imprint in one work, suddenly new possibilities become apparent.
Other works with a more personal aspect are her “portraits” of Tibino, her deceased dalmatian. The white squares with black dots have a dog’s undemanding ebullience and are convincing evocations.
“About Face”
Just down the street at Mayfair, Molly Weiss and Gary Lovelace have put together an exhibit called “About Face” with the theme of
Bettina Werner’s “Salt Ladybug,” from 2007, was made with a textured and colorized salt technique she invented in the 1980s. |
portraiture. The title is a bit of a misnomer, as many of the artists have done portraiture without faces, or they have painted faces that are interpretations of people and personalities.
Ms. Weiss, whose work is included in the show, paints expressionistically. In her portraits the face is often hidden by a mask, the eyes by heart-shaped sunglasses. She depicts the natural features in unnatural hues of pink and blue, whereas the artificial elements, the mask or the shades, are realistically rendered.
The effect is dislocating and uncomfortable, as the subjects appear to be revelatory, but something important is being held back. These figures and faces don’t want the viewer to know them, and as a result the visage that they do show is merely a veil.
Lauren Acquino’s figures are similarly veiled, but in this case quite literally and sometimes almost completely. In photographs she prints herself from film, she works with color and pattern to create realistic abstractions. One knows that there is a figure under all that cloth; in most cases body parts are revealed either piecemeal or in great expanses. But what captures the eye is how the cloth drapes, its folds, and the patterns around it. The figures are placed in settings in which man-made or natural patterns may oppose or mimic the billowing drapery, as with flowing lines made by the water in the sand.
Similarly vague, Heather Whelan portrays people through their settings and possessions. The images are visually interesting, but the context is not apparent in the few works displayed here. It might help to have more images to see the development of what the artist intends, but if these examples are not meant to be in such an installation, they are confounding in this iteration.
Graham Loper’s compositions of figures in antique dress are similarly unknowable. Rendered as if they existed in prior centuries, the faces, actually of real people, appear to be mostly cut out and applied, with the rest of the rendering painted around them. The faces are familiar and sometimes very modern looking, even when they are given the patina of age. The mysteries they imply lie in those facial features, and as a result feel more compelling.
Gabriela Trueba’s work may be familiar from an exhibit of it on Shelter Island over the summer. Her depictions of heads, often attenuated and smeary, look agonized or rigidly stoic. With a very minimum of gesture or detail, her expressionistic style manages to capture truths of the human condition and still provides a clear individualism to the renderings.
Leat Klingman, a Brooklyn-based artist who was born in Israel, takes pen and ink and draws small figures that are placed in moments of tension and fraught relationships. While only five works are on display, it is illustrative that the one image that appears happy and open shows a woman sitting alone amid a minimally implied field of flowers.
“About Face” is on view until Feb. 14. “Crystals of the Winter Sea” can be seen through Feb. 28.By Jennifer Landes
It’s always nice when people or things exceed your expectations. Having regular art shows return to Main Street in East Hampton is one example.
Tiffany & Company has been exhibiting East End artists for a while, Bernard Goldberg has moved into a space on Newtown and Main, and intermittent shows have been part of Elie Tahari’s presentations. Recently the Mayfair jewelry shop gave up one of its spaces on Main Street for the showing of art.
At Tiffany it is the work of “the Salt Queen,” Bettina Werner, that serves as a backdrop for diamonds, other precious and semiprecious stones, silver, and gold. Chosen for the space by Eiman Aziz for a show she calls “Crystals of the Winter Sea,” the jewel-like colors and metallic treatments of the pieces are at just the right pitch for the otherwise sedate surroundings. Their sculptural quality also befits the cases and display areas of the store. The whole experience of the art and retail space is practically seamless, but Ms. Werner does manage to steal the show with the scale and color of her works.
Her process, which appears to be proprietary, yields color-saturated grains and pebbles that are used often over several canvases to achieve an overall effect.
The titles for the abstracted works are often very allusive, such as the intensely hued “Water Mill Sun” or red-pigmented works that all seem to hint at love or romance.
Two works called “Salt More Precious Than Gold” play with the textural aspects of Ms. Werner’s work. In these two gold compositions, she varies the texture from large and coarse to smaller and finer grains. The effect of light on the material and its presence in the work is dramatically apparent. Even the shape of the grains does much for the flow and feel of the pieces.
But even in the metallic works, color is absorptive rather than reflective, giving them an internal rather than external radiance.
The pieces often seem so pristine and untouched by human hands that when the artist incorporates a sign of her interaction with them, as in the kiss she implies with a lip imprint in one work, suddenly new possibilities become apparent.
Other works with a more personal aspect are her “portraits” of Tibino, her deceased dalmatian. The white squares with black dots have a dog’s undemanding ebullience and are convincing evocations.