GIBSON CONTEMPORARY

January 8-February 7, 2016 Station Independent Projects 138 Eldridge Street #2-F Michael Alan, Michele Basora, Vincent Ciniglio, Roya Farassat, Gentleman's Game, Norma Minkowitz, Alfred Steiner.  The Angel of History addresses how artists are fascinated by the models of antiquity, and how they each in their own way engage with the iconology of the past as a means of creating the future. Cumulatively they fill the current historical moment with a wealth of imagery culled from the depth and breadth of their personal influences, their passion for figure, form, color, and detail, and their perspective on how the past builds the present with the future always a sidelong glance. Making work that is both historically significant, idiosyncratic enough to be considered a personal signature, and accruing meaning in a contemporary context are all part of the appeal of such work. Establishing the appeal of timeless genres such as narrative or iconological representation that ar...

To Artists not working in NYC, I am currently  doing Skype studio visits. You will have my undivided attention and immediate feedback on all matters including your artwork in the studio, image files, websites, social media practice, artist statements, and the many idiosyncrasies of navigating the art world, its politics, and dynamics. Inquiries can be made at gibsoncontemporary@gmail.com .

I want to share with you the recent work of Josh Peters , whom I first met in 2010, when he was living and working in Northampton, Massachusetts, taking a break from his workaday life to devote himself to his painting. His studio was housed in the same building where I had organized a group exhibition at a printmaking studio. A mutual friend had recommended him to me. Never one to pass up a possibly interesting encounter, I agreed and dropped by the next day when I had some time to spend. I was not disappointed. In recent years Peters has moved from New York to Los Angeles, where he has seen some definite career high points: a solo exhibition at ACME Gallery in 2013, having his work added to the Artist's Pension Trust, and a forthcoming inclusion in the Pacific Coast Edition of New American Paintings, selected by Apsara DiQuinzio, the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Berkeley Art Museum. His work has changed considerably from then to now, but a cert...

The Paintings of Elsie Kagan Elsie Kagan's painting is a form of revelation. It commingles a search for beauty with a sustained effort to manifest how reason, reality, and temperament can aid us in the creation of something new. Mining the history of artistic expression, searching for touchstones and wellsprings of inspiration, and being able to turn that research into a living and breathing new expression that can aptly invigorate the contemporary perception of beauty, is what Kagan does in her work. Kagan's is not only a technical virtuosity but an educated way of painting that refuses to lean on ability alone. It desires a greater statement, one that is filled with the promise of creation and the threat of destruction. There is a primal element in abundance that builds and drives her interest in genres and art movements: a systematic use of energy that creates a dynamic force within each work and throughout her entire oeuvre. Kagan's system is her c...

Next meetings: Sundays, July 19 & 26, from 12 to 3 PM Since the beginning of my curatorial career I have encountered artists who have struggled with, and even actively resisted, the practice of writing a statement to accompany their work. With my new seminar I hope to successfully address that concern, and work through the issues related to it, helping you to address the theoretical and operational aspects of your creative process and discovering how to address them in language that allows others, from the gallery visitor, to the curator, to the museum director, to relate to what you make in terms they can immediately comprehend and enjoy. Please join me in my home, in a casual setting, to discuss and find the answers to the quandary of having a statement.  These will be small groups of no more than 5 people, and aside from the general topic of discussion, I hope that each person will be able to discuss their own work in the context of the seminar theme. ...

Peggy Bates is a New York based artist with a history of successful solo exhibitions, participation in international art fairs, grants and awards, works in select corporate  collections, and effusive critical praise and context in nationally recognized media sources such as The New York Times, Art in America, Vanity Fair, and Elle. Bates has been exhibiting i n New York since the early 1990's. Her work has been highly exposed by her participation in several art fairs such as Art Miami, Art Wynwood,  AQUA Art Miami, Scope, and the Pool Art Fair. Recently she was selected to participate in "70 Years of Abstract Painting" at the Jason McCoy Gallery. Bates is often referred to as a 'material painter'--someone for whom the paint itself is the primary motif, alternating between formal and symbolic qualities, which are orchestrated through a rigorous practice and a deft understanding of how the elements of color, mass, transparency, and gesture can express both a b...

THE PAINTINGS OF DEIRDRE SOLIN  There exist certain elements of painterly description which are so central to the rigor of artifice that they have flowed from one art form into all the rest, even into contemporary technology which allows us a further degree of reflection upon the idiosyncrasies of the natural world such as digital media. Such elements are so essential to the practice of art that we cannot imagine art not having them, nor a world that can be described without them. Most central among these is Color. Just to say the word itself is to speak volumes, while at the same time to be separated from adequate knowledge as needed to explore its capacity for meaning. In the paintings of Dee Solin we encounter an obsessive engagement with color that operates in the stylistic milieu of painters like Julian Stanczak, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Alfred Jensen, and Bridget Riley. Each of these artists attended to color and structure not as naturally opposed aspects of the same experientia...