Edward Thorp Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of six contemporary painters
in our second installment of this now annual invitation. The title “Assembly” is chosen
to reflect the diverse approaches and subjects to be found within current art practice.
Each work in the exhibit foregrounds technique and a desire to push their subject
matter, through a conflation of representation and abstraction, by incorporating humor
or by creating hybrids of high and low cultural forms.
Cora Cohen ‘s improvised and often brooding works meld calligraphic line; the
paintings are based on pictograms of Linear B script, which carves through and conjoins
with an atmospheric color surfaces. These works emanate a lyricism and configuration
that authenticates the artist’s belief that painting is fundamentally a language.
Produced in variations of gray Amy Feldman’s large-sized compositions appear both
spontaneous and premeditated. Her physically imposing paintings are created with
apparently effortless means. Loosely constructed geometric forms, awkward, ungainly
yet carefully modulated, create fields of tension and anxiety. Sarah Gamble’s vision is
produced by an intuitive approach to both abstract and figurative imagery .Her
spontaneous use of mark-making reveals otherworldly narratives of ethereal landscapes,
figures trapped in architectural frameworks and animal forms emerging from the soil
manifesting free associative combinations of mythology and sci fi. Working with a
diverse array of media Andrew Guenther’s imagery presents a wide range of concerns,
often playful always with the utmost clarity. His innovative vision is sourced from
popular culture, high modernism, music and nature producing sophisticated
improvisations that reflect our collective consciousness With works often using images
sourced from vintage material incorporating postcards and advertisements, Elizabeth
Huey uses painting to translate these fragments from the past thereby recreating her
own interpretations of historic subjects such as modernist architecture of mental health
clinics or health spas, hotels and pools. Her subject matter, which conjoins the present
with the past, produces psychologically charged works that are steeped in nostalgia for
our recent history and laced with a dramatic urgency. Drawing on the landscape of his
native Ohio Kurt Lightner produces willfully overloaded dynamic compositions that
are built on the dramatic discourse between man and nature. His paintings are produced
by an amalgamation of energetic brushstrokes, operating with the dual purpose of
description and destruction, in which a new order of synthesis emerges from the chaos.