FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dalia Caravaggi, Skylor Brummans, Robert Berry, or Philip Zisman
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“Canned Oxygen.” March 5th through March 26, 2011. Opening Reception March 11th, 2011 at 7 p.m.
Icosahedron Gallery is pleased to present “Canned Oxygen,” a group show focused on diverse approaches to contemporary landscape. “Canned Oxygen’s” works range from traditional landscape to urban dystopia, from Abstract Expressionist inspired paintings to visual metaphysical studies. The international roster of featured artists includes Shin-Hye Park, Monika Degan, Stephan Degan, Flavio Carvalho, Barbara Burger, David Abse, Jean Claude Boutrouille, Susan Lüth Hedegaard, Fabio Adani, Giovanni Greppi, Michinori Maru, and Mélanie Lefebvre.
Shin-Hye Park, Monika Degan, and Stephan Degan employ traditional techniques in their landscape paintings. Shin-Hye Park of Korea considers her minimal, tranquil seascapes more spiritual than photorealist. Park’s carefully-cropped compositions communicate notions of inner peace, balance, and Zen through the fluidity of waves.
Married couple Monika and Stephan Degan live and work in Houston, Texas. Before moving to Houston in 1984, Monika was raised in Switzerland. She paints detailed landscapes and seascapes in skilled watercolors. Stephan Degan studied oil painting at The Gary Hernandez School of Fine Art in Houston. Stephan’s work celebrates the beauty of nature in his representational landscapes.
Artists Flavio Carvalho and Barbara Burger’s subjects are the city in their modern concrete landscapes. Award-winning Brazilian designer Flavio Carvalho’s digital C-prints of New York’s rooftop water towers portray the signature melancholy of the city. Shot while on a visit to New York, Carvalho captures the poetry of the empty expanse of sky above the buzzing city. American Barbara Burger illuminates the magic of New York in her paintings. Burger renders familiar places such as the Brooklyn Bridge with heartfelt emotion.
David Abse, Jean Claude Boutrouille and Susan Lüth Hedegaard’s works reinterpret the physical world in colorful abstract landscapes. United Kingdom’s David Abse has exhibited in the UK and internationally since studying art and design at The University of Wolverhampton in the 1980’s. Now living in the south of France, Abse cites a combination of his external and internal environments as inspiration for his raw, gestural paintings. Jean Claude Boutrouille is an intellectual and lover of literature, art, music, cooking and culture. A self-taught painter from France, Boutrouille works in the modernist traditions of Abstract Expressionism, adding a touch of his beloved classics with intentionally cracked and aged surfaces. Susan Lüth Hedegaard of Denmark embraces chaos and chance in her abstract, mixed media pieces. Working on elongated plexiglass panels, Hedegaard’s work is lively and filled with drama.
Exploring landscape from a metaphysical perspective is Fabio Adani, Giovanni Greppi, Michinori Maru, and Mélanie Lefebvre. Italian Fabio Adani’s cold, minimal, predominately blue landscapes redefine the boundaries of thought and reality. Adani’s sparse spaces highlight the possibility that idea is reality itself. Italian-born Giovanni Greppi’s breadth of international experiences, including the destruction a body of his work by guerrilla fighters in Colombia, have informed his sensitive abstract paintings. Now working in Tuscany, Greppi continually produces abstract artwork rooted in themes of idealism and compassion. Michinori Maru of Japan breaks down physical spaces in his cubist-influenced work using his self-coined term, “The Zune,” referring to the gap between the actuality and the memory of experience. Mélanie Lefebvre of Canada explores a range of emotions through focus and manipulation of the horizon line. She states “a line creates space but also divides in into two symbiotic parts”. Showing formal influence of Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko, Lefebvre seeks to create a “sensitive rather than descriptive” space.
For more information or to schedule a private viewing contact:
Telephone: (212) 966-3897