“Looking,” a three-man show of works by Rainer Andreesen, a painter; Christophe von Hohenberg, a photographer, and Oscar Molina, a sculptor, will open Saturday at the Bridgehampton Museum’s Nathaniel Rogers House. Organized by Lana Jokel, it will continue through Aug. 9.
Andreesen has been painting portraits for more than 50 years. Each sitter has influenced or touched his life in some way, ranging from the intimate, such as the portrait of his husband, Victor Garber, to such public figures as David Bowie and Mick Flannery, to close friends and colleagues.
“What motivates my work today is the human condition and its never-ending complexities,” the artist has said. “It’s what I hope to reveal in every portrait. It goes far beyond painting a likeness. My goal is to capture the spirit of each subject, being in the moment, and seeking my truth and the subject’s at the same time.”
According to Catherine McCormick, director of the former MM Fine Art Gallery in Southampton, which represented the artist, “Andreesen presents his subjects without fanfare, there is no narrative, no background, no clues, no distraction. The portraits are powerful, unsentimental character studies, for the most part tightly cropped, with the sitter meeting us with a direct gaze.”
Von Hohenberg has over the course of a more than 40-year career photographed everything from denizens of New York’s cultural and social demimonde to the beaches of the East End. His books include “Andy Warhol: The Day the Factory Died,” which captures the years when Warhol was at the height of his fame, and “Another Planet: New York Portraits 1976-1996.”
As for the beaches, the photographer has said, “I walk the shoreline for hours, waiting like a predator with a camera. I wait for the unrepeatable moment when presence, light, and gesture align. My work is not about the seaside alone, but about the spirit that inhabits it.”
It is also about the light, which bleaches out the figures on the sand, lending them a ghostly quality as they become diminished against the backdrop of the ocean.
Molina was chosen to represent El Salvador, his native country, in this year’s Venice Biennale, which runs through Nov. 22. The sculptor made the trek from his war-torn country to the United States at the age of 16, and wound up ultimately in Southampton. His work in Venice is titled “Cartographies of the Displaced.”
“Children of the World,” his best-known series, reflects his early experiences. It begins with paintings densely populated by elongated figures with tiny heads perched atop richly colored bodies, deployed horizontally across the lower half of the canvas as if in transit.
Those works evolved into the sculptures, which have been exhibited across the East End and well beyond. Those figures are cylindrical, tapering to the small heads, and always arranged in groups.
“Politics, culture, and identity — how they intersect and interact with one another is what intrigues me, what my art explores,” Molina has said.
“Journey of Hope: The Art of Oscar Molina,” a 45-minute documentary by Jokel, a filmmaker whose lens has captured dozens of artists since her 1973 film “Andy Warhol,” will be shown at the Southampton Arts Center on Sunday at 6 p.m.
