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Abstract Matters
Artists
Press Release
Cos Cob, CT, April 2012--The Drawing Room Art Gallery is pleased to present the new group exhibition, Abstract Matters: Four Fresh Perspectives on Contemporary Abstraction, which runs April 6, to June 4, 2013. The Drawing Room Art Gallery invites the greater public to attend the Opening Reception and meet the artists, on Saturday, April 6, from 6:30-8:30 pm. The Drawing Room Art Gallery is located at 5 Suburban Avenue, Cos Cob, CT.
Abstract Matters highlights the work of four visual artists from New Mexico to Georgia to Vermont whose work engages in a personal dialogue with the language of abstraction. This exhibit includes acrylic & oils on canvas, wood construction assemblages and printmaking, each of which begs its viewers to move closer and become inspired.
Featured artists are Michelle Armas (Atlanta, GA), Duncan Johnson (West Hartford, VT), Carol MacDonald (Colchester, VT) and Eric Reinemann (Santa Fe, NM).
In perfect time for spring, Michelle Armas explores an expressionist style of painting, full of emotion, utilizing a vivid palette of color within her painterly compositions. Building energetic layers of texture and lyrical mark-making, her paintings references urban graffiti and even woven textiles, while simultaneously engaging in a personal dialogue with the Early Abstract Expressionist painters such as Cy Twombly and Joan Mitchell.
Working with only the reclaimed wood that he sources from Vermont, Duncan Johnson crafts striking and surprising compositions embedded with a the sensual texture and intriguing history, from each precisely milled strip of wood. The work evokes an intriguing use of color and space, causing some compositions to allude to a deeper place, further beyond what’s visually apparent on the surface. His use of repetition and patterning, are evocative of Johnson’s personal interests ranging from architecture to quilt-making.
Carol MacDonald’s rich array of printmaking celebrates both repetition and process, often referencing fibers and knitted textiles that she has knit herself. Calling the viewer to look more closely and sensitively at the abstract pattern within each stitch, she delightfully exposes the playful twists and turns that yarn makes to create a simple fabric or garment. These moments mimic the complexities and routines of daily life, while calling us to realize the astounding beauty that one can find in such repetitive rhythms and actions that remain threaded to our sense of time, personal meaning, family traditions.
Eric Reinemann’s puzzling paintings utilize direct perceptual observation that is underpinned by structural recordings of the visual world, relating to space and time. Drawing plays a critical role in the process of his work. Often utilizing still life as the basic structure that drives each work, Reineman embraces the rhythmic qualities created through the drawing of changing perspectives, movement and fluctuating shapes and proportions. Introducing new ways of looking at life, as viewers we become participants in an unexpected visual journey.
Each of these artists’ unique constructions of the abstract picture plane is rich and decadent with color and sensual texture. Celebrating the formalist qualities of art that so often drive us to fall in love with the purity of a simple color relationship, or a delicate painted shape, each image in this collection skillfully captures abstraction at its finest.
