MARY SHERMAN

April 7-30, 2001

Trained as an academic figure painter in New York, Vienna, and Boston, Mary realized that what really interested her was the sculptural qualities of paint. She likes the way paint can be used, not only as an illusionistic medium, but as a material that itself can be built up, scraped, scored and layered into sculptural surfaces. She believes that the chromatic and relief properties of impastoed paint are better vehicles for expressing her emotional and psychological ideas than are more conventional, representational paintings. This led her to experiment with three-dimensional supports in order to enhance the work's sculptural and emotive impact. For instance, one piece, "Bolts of Blue" is a heavily impastoed, twilight blue painting meant to convey the cold, northern light and shifting glacial topography of Iceland. She also extended the painting through space, from one wall to another, to carry further the landscape metaphor.

The variously textured earth toned paintings in another piece, "The Great Plains," hang from the ceiling in a collage of planes to form an abstract aerial landscape inspired by a stay in the Midwest. Two other pieces, "The White Painting" and "Sunset Strip," are thickly painted, modular panels--one icy cold, the other as hot as the setting sun--that can be slid and rearranged into variant compositions to continuously change the works' overall composition to suit the work's site as well as the viewers' desires. Likewise "A House of Cards" is made up of approximately 100 interlocking transparent plexi-glass, reflective aluminum and painted panels so as to become a changeable painting in the round. Another piece, "Godzilla (reduced to frames)," is a painting thinly sliced, stretched upward into space and supported by a few thin rods, like the pathetic creature of the B-movies from which it takes its name. "An Urban Sky"--her version of a Baroque ceiling painting, tilted on its side--is made up of painted panels that flip over, changing the colors and the overall design of the piece as well as the suggestion of different times of a late Fall day. It also incorporates the sound of rain and thunder.

Much of the work also attempts to extend painting's role beyond the traditional flat, immutable and silent image on a wall. It seems that paintings don't have to sit on just a single wall, but, can span a room, be suspended from a ceiling, or lie on a floor. They also can play with art historical trends, so that a piece like "A Line Up," with its ochre lines up the sides of Donald Judd like rectangles, abstract handmade surfaces, and allusion to a police line up, can be seen as a kind of humanistic play on Minimalism's cool, hard-edged geometry. At a point when we are deluged with photographic images and texts and have learned to approach images at a glance, the pleasure of experiencing the sensuality of textures, surfaces and colors has become rare.

NurtureArt @ gallery X
conceptuel art by
mary sherman - egon zippel

April 7 - April 30, 2001

NURTUREart is pleased to feature the work of Mary Sherman and Egon Zippel in a venue with an established reputation for exhibiting conceptual art. Both are mature fine artists who have individually grappled with issues of particular Ð one may say idiosyncratic Ð interest. Mary Sherman questions the nature and limits of painting. Egon Zippel investigates the power of the corporate logo. Notwithstanding the fact that at first glance this two-person exhibition appears to treat entirely different subjects, in actuality it illustrates what unites these artists - a fascination with the phenomena of assumption and expectation.

When Is A Painting Not A Painting?
Mary Sherman trained as an academic figure painter in New York, Vienna, and Boston. She currently teaches painting and drawing at Boston College, sculpture at Emmanuel College, and she is on the faculty of Northeastern University. Although trained in academic painting, Sherman eventually realized that what really interested her was the sculptural qualities of paint. The body of ShermanÕs oeuvre since 1994 has involved work that challenges conventional thinking about the painting as illusionistic medium. NURTUREart @ X debuts three distinct examples - Sunset Strip, The White Painting, and An Urban Sky. ShermanÕs imaginative experimentation has been driven by a desire to enhance the sculptural and emotive impact of her work, and to extend the spatial range of what a painting can be.

Logos vs. Logos
We all recognize the rounded M Ð the "golden arches" Ð of McDonald's, and the angles of the Marlboro sign. A large black circle topped by two smaller ones "is" Mickey Mouse, a.k.a. Disney; a swoosh must be Nike. Coca-ColaÕs white wave on a red background is probably the worldÕs best known corporate logo - besides the cross of the church. While recognizing the informational value of these ubiquitous logos, Egon ZippelÕs MMMNC-series examines their intrinsic aesthetic capabilities. Whole and parts are structurally analyzed and then brought together in a new visual correspondence. Normally merely a technical consideration, here the very choice of canvas is symbolic. The logoconglomerates and logolandscapes of the MMMNC-series are at once a playful interpretation of corporate culture, and an examination of corporate logosÕ intent, veracity, and psychological impact.

RAPHAEL W. DAVRON

'Harlem On Mind'

Feb 22 - March 16, 2001

'The 'Graffiti M' has roots in Harlem. As graffiti has made its incursion into my conciousness, it has affected my art. My incorporation of the graffiti elements is not meant to shock or to force a popular response. I paint as an observer, not a participant----as if from behind a lattice or screen. In particular, I have associated the venetian blind with the Renaissance era as a jump off point.

The interface of horizontal and vertical lines with sunlight brightens my palette and the slashing light rays add a new dimension to my forms. The subjects, themselves, are of common origin and indifferent to the technique as is exemplified in "Shopping Alone" and "The Trumpet" .'

- Raphael W. Davron

Mr Raphael W. Davron has exhibited in many group shows and has works also in public and private collections. Photos and articles of his works --in particular "Park Ave" appear in the Washington Post and The New York Times.

JUDY RIFKA

Recent works

January 11-31, 2001

"Few Painters are capable of impact. With her painstakingly nervous line, Judy rifkaexplodes the surface of her paintings-on-linen with a force both primal and sophisticated. Rifka's showing of new works at Gallery X harkens not only to her nudes and shaped strechers, and her celestial murals (such as her Gods-at-leisure commission at the Union Square Cafe), but to her almost living studies of classical and contemporary architectures. Portraits of Mars and Jupiter pulse with energy, and surety of a Universe alive. She asks- how could we have ever believed the world is ever flat? how could we have ever believed the univers was dead? And her answer, in paintings luminescent and spacious, and some completely globular (all the way around), is that painting too is entirety, a whole, and a vitality of its own.

-John Reed

In a career spanning over 50 one-person shows and countless group exhibitions (among them), two Whitney Biennials and Documenta Seven), Rifka has a tradition of diverse venues, from SoHo and Fifty-Seventh Street to the East Village. In keeping with this frontiersman spirit, Gallery X shows Rifka's recent works.

" XX-istenz "

BANU GROTE

January 11-31, 2001

The exhibit "XX-istenz" by Banu Grote, a series of relief paintings on mixed soft materials, addresses the primal aspects of womanhood.

Delicate oval structures of translucent gauze sewn to the sculptured canvas create a three-dimensional array of bulging cells. Pale opaque brush strokes accentuate the plasticity of the protective shells, concealing and mystifying their secret content. Yet as light strikes the canvas, the cocoons come to life, exposing their encapsulated fragile webs, vibrant with color and energy.

Banu Grote (Erdemli) graduated in 1991 from the School of Fine Arts at Marmara University, Istanbul. She has had numerous group and solo exhibits, both in Turkey and in New York City, where she lived from 1994 until 1997. Currently she lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.