New Shows at Halsey Mckay

Halsey Mckay has opened two new shows at its East Hampton gallery space. One, “Inversion Spectrum,” is a solo show of works by Corey Escoto, who uses both analog and digital processes in photography to tease the viewer into figuring out which is which, where the origin of each image lies, and how photography has adapted to contain all of the available technology.

David Kennedy Cutler, Ethan Greenbaum, Mariah Robertson, and Letha Wilson combine forces for “Surface Artificial Matter,” which also deals with the changing nature of photography as a medium, whether as an end in itself or the basis for the exploration of other mediums such as sculpture.

Both exhibitions will be on view through Nov. 16.

Wallace on View in N.Y.C.

On a separate but related note, Ryan Wallace, one of the partners in Halsey Mckay, is showing his own work at Susan Inglett’s gallery in Chelsea through Dec. 6.

Mr. Wallace’s reliefs mine abstraction’s technical and formal properties. The results are explorations of texture, light, and surface tension in a “chromatically minimalist” palette. In his stacked-cube sculptures, he harnesses both Minimalism and Expressionism, “incorporating elements that cannot function in two-dimensional space.”

Incorporating influences from predecessors such as Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, and Bruce Naumann, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant recipient ultimately allows painting and sculpture to co-exist in one piece, sharing a similar language and material.

Bartley Talk

Mary Ellen Bartley will take viewers through her photography exhibition “Leaning Above the Page” at Guild Hall in East Hampton on Saturday at 2 p.m. The artist won top honors at the 2012 Artists Members Exhibition from Lilly Wei, an independent curator, essayist, and critic for Art in America. The talk is free with admission.

Abstraction at Ille

Amagansett’s Ille Arts will open “Life in the Abstract” tomorrow, with a reception Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m.

John Haubrich, Barbara Groot, and Dru Frederick have been brought together for this exhibition by Ms. Groot, who serves as curator. She found consistency in their interpretation of abstract art, rooted in the design background of each. She was a textile designer; Mr. Haubrich is an art director, and Ms. Frederick has worked in art restoration and conservation. How they explore the elements of composition such as mass, geometry, line, and color, is a major theme.

The exhibition will remain on view through Nov. 10.

Speaking of Murals

Jane Weissman, an artist and author, will present “Protest and Celebration: Community Murals in NYC” at the Montauk Library on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. The free slide lecture will look at collaborations between artists and neighborhood groups to beautify the cityscape. The artist, who is also a muralist, was the co-author of “On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City.”

Poetics of Space

Tripoli Gallery in Southampton will open the show “Poetics of Space” on Saturday with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibition will feature work by Jonathan Beer and Michael Chiarello.

Mr. Chiarello, who lives and works in East Hampton, makes sculptures out of steel that are open and welcoming. Mr. Beer paints both abstractly and realistically within the same canvas.

The work of both artists, whose different yet kindred spatial concerns balance each other aesthetically, according to the gallery, will be on view through Nov. 24.

Bateman’s Abstractions

Roisin Bateman’s moody and colorful abstractions will be on view at Peter Marcelle Project in Southampton beginning Saturday, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

Based in Sag Harbor for the past 25 years, Ms. Bateman actually hails from western Ireland; she attended art school in Belfast. Her early impression of that country’s landscape, particularly of rocky terrain and the sea as well as the soft light, were translated into the same components on the East End. They come to fruition in abstraction that breaks the elements down to their essence and manages to evoke much more than their surface would at first indicate.

After the opening, the gallery will be open “by chance or appointment.” The show will remain on view through Nov. 16.

Michele Stuart in Manhattan

An exhibition of Michelle Stuart’s work called “Silent Movies” will be on view at the Leslie Tonkonow gallery in Chelsea from Saturday through Dec. 2.

An early practitioner of a 1960s genre known as “land art,” Ms. Stuart’s artistic practice has grown to include multi-paneled works incorporating photography, wax, plant life, and other mediums, primarily in an eclectic and allusive grid-format.

On Saturday at 5 p.m., the Watermill Center will present an open rehearsal of Lydian Junction. The group, which creates live art that incorporates performance, video, installation, music, and dance, has been in residency at the center since Oct. 14. They will complete it on Wednesday.

Members of Lydian Junction are Sarah Cameron Sunde, Dages Juvelier Keates, Christopher Berg, Oliver Burns, and Karla Carballar, each of whom has a specialty, whether in dance, performance, video art, or other disciplines.

Their current work, “Born for Nothing,” is a response to the center’s collection and grounds, with themes of adherence to routine, the ephemeral, and the tensions created from individuality within a group context.

Guest artists for the residency include Josh Dumas, Natalia Roumelioti, Anna Kiraly, Laura Mroczkowski, Tegan Ritz MacDuffie, and Edgar Westerhof. Reservations, which are required for this free event, can be made through watermillcenter.org.

Those who think they are starting to see Colin Goldberg everywhere are probably right. Work by the recent Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant recipient is currently on view at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller in East Hampton and at the Southampton Cultural Center, and he was part of a group show at the Southampton Arts Center this summer.

The Greenport artist is notable for the successful integration of designs and drawings created with his computer and for the gestural brushwork that is the hallmark of Abstract Expressionism. “Techspressionism,” the term he coined for this hybrid, is more than a label, it’s a manifesto, as outlined in the catalog of the Horowitz show.

His official definition is “an artistic style in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience rather than impressions of the external world.” Elaborating recently at his Greenport studio, he said the computer was “one of many tools in the continuum of technology” that artists have used over the centuries.

Such tools have included the camera, printing press, and even pen, pencil, and paint. Frank Stella used early computer programs to block out some of his geometric paintings, and Franz Kline used a projector as a visual aid in his abstraction. These days it is common for painters to mock up ideas using computer technology and as a tool to complete a work. David Hockney’s iPad paintings, made with an app called Brushes, are just one notable example. “It’s a lot more integrated than people realize,” said Mr. Goldberg.

He was hesitant to describe what he creates as computer or digital art. “It’s just one facet,” he said. “Not a crutch, but a means to an end.” When people ask him if a work is computer-generated, he says “they are marks that the computer helped me execute.”

If he uses a pen or pencil to draw by hand, he finds it tedious. “It’s like I become the rendering machine, the printer. There’s no creativity, because I already know what it will look like. I’m just doing it for the sake of doing it.” A computer is “where ideas are generated,” he explained. “When I put stretched cut linen on the floor and do a gestural painting, I still enjoy it, but I get the same feeling on the computer watching it print.”

Helen Harrison, the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs, has been a supporter of Mr. Goldberg’s career. She quoted Jackson Pollock in her forward to the Horowitz catalog: “Each age finds its own technique.” She goes on to compare the young artist to Pollock as well as Max Ernst and William Stanley Hayter, in his approach to form and his use of novel mediums.

Growing up on Middle Line Highway in Southampton (then a dirt road), Mr. Goldberg discovered art early. Also one of the first kids to have his own computer, a Commodore 64, he immediately saw its graphics potential. “There were two other nerdy kids in my grade and we formed a computer club. Back then it was the Apple 2 users versus the Commodore users . . . I never thought it would become such an integral part of our culture.”

After graduating from high school in 1990, he ended up at SUNY Binghamton, where Angelo Ippolito, a second-generation New York School artist, became an influence. “He didn’t teach us to paint abstractly, but explained his work in a way that made sense to me. His work was about paint, and the viewer could bring anything they wanted to it.”

In his graduate work with computers, the artist truly began to understand that view. His undergraduate work had been mostly Surrealist.

Through an internship program at Southampton College (where his parents taught chemistry), Mr. Goldberg became a studio assistant to Steve Miller in Sagaponack. It gave him an early appreciation of how science and art could merge successfully. It also taught him about the business of art. He would see Mr. Miller working in the studio three days a week and spending the rest of his time on the business end — financials, networking, whatever else was required. “That’s never taught in art school, it’s not even breathed about, and that’s a shame.”

Mr. Goldberg decided to support himself with his tech background just about the time when the Internet was becoming the Next Great Thing. “I got involved right at the beginning of the industry,” he said. His website designs for entities such as Snapple, Popular Science, and Golf magazine gave him “a digital-tool skill set.”

A few years later, his parents convinced him to go to graduate school. He was accepted at Bowling Green University in Ohio, one of the few schools at the time offering students a master’s degree in computer art and a full scholarship as well. There, he began incorporating digital drawing and painting into his work. “A lot of students who get an M.F.A. use it to apply for teaching jobs. My goal was to make as much work as possible.” Even then, many of his classmates hoped to end up working as animators at companies such as Disney and Pixar.

Up to that time, Mr. Goldberg had used digital drawing in prints for “Metagraphs,” a series he started in 1999. The exhibition at Horowitz, organized by Scott Bluedorn, will include an animation video of 12 of those pieces that pulls each image apart and puts it back together while rolling into the next one. They can also be seen in their original two-dimensional form in an installation at the S.Y.S. running track in Southampton. For these works, made in editions of 100, “I see the real piece as the code behind the work,” he said.

Mr. Goldberg has done little work in animation or video. He took a class in graduate school, but soon realized it would take his entire course of study to become really good at it. “My preference is to make things to hang on the wall,” he said.

Around 2004, he started to experiment with printing on top of painted works with a medium-format printer. The artist, who is half-Japanese, was inspired by his grandmother’s calligraphy in this series. She took the art form very seriously, once chastising him for thinking he could take it up without a sensei. The paintings on paper would then be overprinted with the drawings made on the computer. “I had to take the rollers out, they were leaving track marks.”

His Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant went to buy a large-format printer, which prints up to 44 inches wide and on a variety of materials including linen and even corrugated cardboard — something that, as a new father, he couldn’t justify purchasing on his own. He makes a decent living as a web designer, a talent he often barters in exchange for other goods and services. “If I didn’t have what keeps making me want to create art, I’d be better off financially,” he said. “I call it my art habit‚ in a way others might refer to drugs.”

He lived in New York City for several years and elsewhere in the country, but said he was happy to be settled here to raise a family. He remembers when Kathleen King’s $100 million baking company was just the cookies she sold at her family farm stand, and he misses those days, when you could just leave money in a jar for the vegetables you took. It is why he will likely stay on the North Fork, because it resembles the community he remembers from his childhood.

In Greenport, Mr. Goldberg likes that Mark Rothko is buried down the road and that he can share in the East End history of artists such as Pollock and others he admires. The Pollock-Krasner House has taken some of his work into its collection, including a picture of the studio floorboards he made as a screen print and one of Pollock’s gravestone. For someone whose first public exhibition was at the Parrish Art Museum’s student show in 1989, returning to the Job’s Lane building this summer may have felt part of that artistic continuum.

An informal reception will be held for Mr. Goldberg on Saturday from noon until 5 p.m. at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller.

New at Harper’s

Harper’s Books in East Hampton will open “Brad Phillips: Law and Order” with a reception Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibition will continue through Jan. 5.

Mr. Phillips, who is based in Toronto, takes his inspiration from high and low culture. His paintings oscillate between text and image and range from realistic renderings of people and objects to paintings of slogans, faux book covers, medical prescriptions, and verbal puns. He toys with the relationship between text and its representation, using commercial fonts, faux ransom lettering, and brightly colored words with often sordid messages.

The artist has exhibited in solo and group shows worldwide and has been awarded grants from the British Columbia Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Jane Wilson in New York

DC Moore Gallery in Manhattan is celebrating Jane Wilson’s 60-year career with an exhibition of her rarely seen 1960s cityscapes inspired by the city’s Tompkins Square Park, as well as recent landscapes. The show will continue through Nov. 1.

Ms. Wilson, who lives in New York and Water Mill, has been a leading landscape painter since the late 1950s, when she began painting atmospheric views of the park and its surrounding neighborhood.

Her more recent paintings, which hover between abstraction and representation, are inspired by the sea, sky, and landscape of the East End. However, in her words, “My landscapes are not painted on-site or from photographs. They come out of my mind . . . out of my bones, really.”

Ms. Wilson’s work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum of Art and Sculpture Garden, and many others.

Gabriele Raacke in Springs

“Front and Back,” a solo show of new paintings on glass by Gabriele T. Raacke, will be on view at Ashawagh Hall in Springs tomorrow through Sunday. A reception will be held tomorrow from 5 to 8 p.m.

While Ms. Raacke, who lives in East Hampton, works in collage and acrylic on canvas, she is best known for her glass pieces, in which the image is applied to one side of the glass, in reverse, and viewed through the other, as if through a window.

The exhibition will include new works featuring fairy-tale like scenes of imaginary animals and people, large flower paintings, and abstract work, all informed by Ms. Raacke’s wry sense of humor and a touch of the surreal.

When first confronted with the hodgepodge of artist names from the South Fork’s past and present on view at Peter Marcelle Project in Southampton, one cannot be faulted for assuming the exhibition might be a bit of a visual mess.

Instead the show is nicely focused, rich with color and movement, and surprisingly balanced. There are old stalwarts of the midcentury artists colony such as Jackson Pollock, Elaine de Kooning, and Alfonso Ossorio, all well represented. A Pollock gouache from the late 1930s hints at mural designs and is struck at a pivotal moment when he turned away from his early mentor, Thomas Hart Benton, and followed a more inward path inflected with Mexican influences. Those years were highlighted in last year’s “Men of Fire: Jose Clemente Orozco and Jackson Pollock” exhibition at the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs.

De Kooning’s work is undated but is a nicely tangled abstraction full of energy and strong brushstrokes. Ossorio’s piece, “Blue Dancer” from 1962, looks like an ornate royal brooch designed by the court jester. It is encrusted with baubles and shells, evil eyes, and what looks like tar. It is a tribute and provocation all at once.

Except for a Miriam Dougenis watercolor of a rubber tree plant from 1977, the show takes an abrupt turn in the time machine to the present day with recent examples from Jennifer Cross, Christopher Engel, Eric Ernst, Kimberly Goff, Tracy Harris, Giancarlo Impiglia, Dennis Leri, Jon Mulhern, Jacob Ouilette, Amy Pilkington, Barbara Press, Frank Wimberly, and Gavin Zeigler.

Mr. Zeigler is represented with both bronze sculptures and a two-dimensional work. There is a certain cohesion between the pieces, all of which hint at motion and stasis with a roughly hewn geometric orientation.

“Arbor,” an encaustic and oil on panel by Ms. Harris, is predictably luminous but wonderfully Fauvist in its coloration, a piece that alludes to a thing and still filters it through the mind’s eye.

Mr. Wimberly’s “Red Shoes” is reminiscent of Franz Kline’s experiments with color, and the bold patches are monolithic and fierce.

An acrylic on wood sculpture, “There Is No Rebellion Against Physics” by Mr. Ernst, has a pleasant conversation with the Ossorio work. A similar kind of piling-on aesthetic that is joyful and fun interweaves both.

The Ross School in East Hampton is represented by paintings from Ms. Cross and Mr. Engel. Mr. Engel joins Ms. Dougenis in bringing a stronger figurative element to the exhibition. Although others allude to things in nature, they include recognizable objects or figures that, while not exact representations, still color outside the lines of non-objective art. In Mr. Engel’s case, it is “Shiva Holds a Candle,” a flat and blockish figure holding what looks more like a book or icon than a candle, and wearing a party-hat crown.

Ms. Cross’s “Ancient History” includes some representational elements such as a collection of lines that looks like foliage and perhaps a ruin or two, but the oil on wood painting is misty and ethereal. What is seen could easily be a mirage or a dream.

The brass piece by Ms. Pilkington, in shades of blue and green formed by a heat and chemical process, could be a blown-up detail of a late Monet “Waterlilies” painting, and it has the same fluidity. Mr. Impiglia’s “Nature Fallacy” in acrylic and gold leaf on camouflage canvas shares a similar use of unconventional materials.

There are strong works by Ms. Goff, Mr. Leri, Mr. Mulhern, and Mr. Ouilette as well. The exhibition remains on view through Monday. Hours for the gallery, which is in the old 4 North Main Street space, are irregular. It is best to call ahead for an appointment.

The Montauk Library will present “Moving Pictures: Classical Music in Cartoons,” a free piano concert by Alina Kiryayeva, Sunday at 3:30 p.m. The program is inspired by several cartoons from American animation’s golden age, which featured such characters as Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and Tom and Jerry as concert artists playing the works of important classical composers.

A native of Ukraine, Ms. Kiryayeva has won prizes in many international piano competitions and has toured Russia, Mexico, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Holland, Japan, and the United States. Her program will include works by Chopin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Liszt.

The John Drew Theater Lab will present a free staged reading of Lyle Kessler’s play “Orphans” on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., directed by Sawyer Avery and Megan Minutillo and featuring Joe Pallister, Christopher Imbrosciano, and Mr. Avery.

“Orphans,” which premiered in Los Angeles in 1983 and has been performed worldwide since then, is the story of two brothers abandoned in childhood and living together in North Philadelphia. Phillip is a sensitive recluse who never leaves home, while his older brother, Treat, provides for them by stealing. When Treat kidnaps a gangster, the story takes unexpected turns, with the victim emerging as a surrogate father.

The Southampton Cultural Center’s Center Stage Theatre series will open next Thursday at 7:30 p.m. with “The World Goes ’Round,” a program of the greatest hits of John Kander and Fred Ebb, the songwriting team known for their work on Broadway and in motion pictures.

The evening will include music from “Chicago,” “Cabaret,” “Liza With a Z,” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” as well as songs from the films “New York, New York” and “Funny Lady.” Performances will take place Thursdays through Sundays at 7:30, through Nov. 9. Tickets are $25, $23 for senior citizens on Fridays, and $12 for students under 21 with identification.

The Parrish Art Museum’s Salon Series will feature two performances by William Hobbs, a classical pianist, tomorrow at 6 p.m. and Saturday afternoon at 2.

The concert will feature Night Music Op. 109 for flute, clarinet, and piano by Lowell Liebermann, an American composer who will attend the performance. Claire Temin Bird, flute, and Anna Temin Meisel, clarinet, will perform the work with Mr. Hobbs.

The program will also include piano transcriptions of works by Chopin, Liszt, Stravinsky, and Bach. Tickets are $20, $10 for members.

The Hamptons International Film Festival’s “A Conversation With Patricia Clarkson” on Friday delivered more than advertised. The actress, whose film “Learning to Drive” was one of the festival’s Spotlight Films, provided her Bay Street Theater audience with a riveting, hourlong performance filled with humor, insight, self-revelation, and a bounty of anecdotes and observations culled from almost 30 years as an actress, all elicited with finesse by the film critic Thelma Adams.

Directed by Isabel Coixet, “Learning of Drive” is the story of Wendy Shields (Ms. Clarkson), a literary critic whose husband unexpectedly leaves her after 20 years, and Darwan (Ben Kingsley), a Sikh driving instructor and part-time cab driver, who is reluctantly facing an arranged marriage to a woman from his native village in India.

For Wendy, conquering her fear of driving becomes a metaphor for achieving independence, and she resists both through much of the film. A chance encounter brings her into contact with Darwan, who convinces her to let him teach her.

The film was a long time coming to fruition. “I was attached to it for at least eight years, dog years, I think,” Ms. Clarkson said. “It’s a beautiful film based on a gorgeous Katha Pollitt short story that was published in The New Yorker, and Sarah Kernochan wrote a wonderful script.” She and the producer Dana Friedman were like “two dogs with a bone,” convinced the film could and should be made.

Asked why the part of Wendy was special, Ms. Clarkson said, “I’ve been fortunate to play many beautiful characters on film in supporting parts and a few leading parts, but what I always want as an actress is the part that requires the greatest emotions, the greatest stretch, that requires a new breadth. Wendy demanded every bit and more. It’s one of those parts that, as a woman, we long for. Unfortunately, they’re few and far between.”

Ms. Clarkson talked about her first film role as the wife of Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) in Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables.” Just out of Yale School of Drama, she went to read for Lynn Stalmaster, one of the industry’s pre-eminent casting directors. “I went in looking kind of glamorous. He told me to leave, remove my makeup, get rid of my fancy dress and hairdo, and then come back.” 

She returned in a borrowed gingham dress, no makeup, and her 1980s big hair “that barely fit through the doorway.” She made a joke about her appearance to Mr. De Palma. “We started laughing about it, and he wound up reading with me. Brian was amazing. I’d never been on a set before, and there I was in a movie with Kevin Costner and Robert De Niro. The first day Brian asked me to do 30 takes to see where I hit my stride, whether I reached it early or late. He learned I was early, and that by the 30th take I’m just not there anymore.”

Later in her career she worked with Woody Allen on “Vicki Cristina Barcelona” and “Whatever Works.” “Woody’s quite tough. He doesn’t direct you often. He lets you be, which I find quite amazing and freeing. He’s not going to step in and nitpick. But you do have to be 1,000-percent prepared. He’s very quick, he does not suffer fools, he wants to shoot it, he wants you to get it right, and he wants you to be really good.” She said that she and Larry David almost had breakdowns during “Whatever Works” because they had so many lines and knew they couldn’t stop. “You have to be present with your other actors. It’s like theater in that Woody uses long, wide shots.”

Martin Scorcese, whom she worked for on “Shutter Island,” was a different type of director. “He’s moment-to-moment, he’s feral, he’s brilliant.” She wasn’t given a script to read at first. “They just said, ‘It’s you and Leo [DiCaprio] in a cave.’ ” She paused, then repeated, breathlessly, “Just me and Leo in a cave. I can do this.” She said Mr. Scorcese genuinely loves actors, and “he still has fresh eyes and a fresh heart.”

Acting is one of the few professions in which you can keep growing, Ms. Clarkson said. “At 54, I do better than I did things when I was 30. Acting is a muscle, you get stronger.” That doesn’t make it less daunting. “As you age, it’s always frightening when you’re doing scenes or characters that require the darkest parts of you, but if it isn’t frightening, you’re not doing it the right way, and you should get out of the business. It’s like that great Tom Waits lyric, ‘If I exorcise my devils, well the angels might leave too.’ ”

Mr. Clarkson began rehearsals on Monday with Bradley Cooper and Alessandro Nivola for “The Elephant Man,” a revival of the Bernard Pomerance play that will have its first preview at the Booth Theater Nov. 7. “I haven’t been on Broadway in a long time. I’m a theater-trained actress, so it’s part of my DNA, but it’s daunting.” Mr. Pomerance’s daughter was in the Bay Street audience.

She is also attached to a film project to play Tallulah Bankhead. “What fool wouldn’t want to play Tallulah Bankhead?” she asked, deploying, not for the first time, a particularly husky Southern accent. Reflecting on her career, she said, “Now I have more options than I used to. I can pick and choose. I try to read everything that comes my way, but I’m looking for a part that’s going to take me to a place I haven’t been or take me to a new height, or a director I long to work with. For the most part I look at the script as a whole. Because as great as your role might be, you’re part of a whole.”