Ned Evans, Bingo, Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas, 41 x 41 inches

When a surfer catches a wave perfectly, for a few ecstatic moments his body, the surfboard and the sea become one, flying with the wind toward the implacable beach. Malibu, Baja, El Salvador, Hawaii: the Meccas of surfing have been the classrooms of Ned Evans for nearly a half-century, just as were the art classes of Robert Irwin, Ed Moses, Larry Bell and Craig Kaufman at the University of California at Irvine.

Evans’ exuberant canvases, inspired by surf and strand, evolved from “natural influences of the ocean, transferring its movement and energy into abstracts of color, strokes, patterns and layers,” according to the artist, who states:

“The physicality of surfing and the immersion in the medium translate into what happens in the studio. It’s not conscious—it just happens for me. I like to immerse myself in the process of the painting and the liquidity of the paint. Everything’s done wet on wet, and it carries right over into a similar sensation when you’re surfing. In other words, it’s about getting lost, losing the gravitational pull, or at least suspending it all for a moment.”

Evans’ paintings have been featured in more than 100 exhibitions in such leading venues as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, the La Jolla Museum of Art, and the Laguna Beach Museum of Contemporary Art.

See more artwork by Ned Evans here

Andy Moses, Departure at Dawn, 20 x 30 inches, 2007, Acrylic on Concave Canvas

By Margery Gordon
Published in ARTnews

The quintet of abstract painters sharing this space use distinct techniques that complement one another’s work and ultimately amplify the impact of each individually.

The compositions of Andy Moses and Linda Touby share a motif of horizontal bands of color. Touby’s thick swaths of primary and earthy hues come together in rough edges that reveal distressed layers. This ongoing series, titled “Homage to Giotto,” evokes the texture of eroding frescoes. In contrast, Moses (son of Los Angeles painter Ed Moses) applies aerospace paints in thin strokes to create subtle gradations of color that achieve a shade-shifting effect, especially on the concave surfaces of Departure at Dawn (2007) and Nocturne Latitude 20 30 03 (2008).

While those works hint at aeronautical views, this subject is treated more literally in the fluorescent-tinged paintings of Florian Depenthal, a German glider pilot. Some of his paintings’ vertiginous angles and mysterious forms are inspired by his airborne perspectives of the earth’s planes and by everyday shapes distorted by distance. His recent bright canvases give way to the dark, moody 1995 gem Fellow Conspirator, which is tucked into a back corner to allow for solitary contemplation.

Michelle Concepción paints mysterious dreamscapes resembling blood platelets enlarged under a microscope. A video documents how she delicately drips semitranslucent acrylic pigments onto canvas, letting the biomorphic blobs change color as they drift across one another in ever more layers. This engagement with the accidental contrasts with Aaron Karp’s optical illusions, exuberant works featuring celestial shapes overlaid with painted screens that look like raised rectangles. The resulting wavy grids make the saucers and stars in Cuchara Dancer (2004) and Dry Smokey (2004) appear three-dimensional.

This smartly curated show lets each artist shine individually while highlighting the subtle connections linking their diverse styles.

Being held at the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum, University of Louisiana at Lafayette from Jan. 22 through May 1st, the exhibition was coordinated by Miller, who has held three major exhibitions of Chinese contemporary works at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries.

The exhibition was curated over a two-year period by Dr. Lee Gray, who moderated the symposium. Also speaking were two of the show’s artists, Ma Baozhong and Luo Weiguo, along with the critic, curator and author Lilly Wei.

“East/West: Visually Speaking” is illustrated extensively in a 100-page catalog that includes essays by Lilly Wei and Dr. Gray. In its foreword, Museum Director Mark A. Tullos, Jr. states that “I particularly would like to thank Virginia Miller, whose experience and knowledge of the artists and their associated representatives was invaluable to the curatorial process.”

“As a university museum our mission is to offer exhibitions that provoke thought and create dialogue,” Tullos notes. “This is probably one of the most significant international projects undertaken by an American museum in the South.”

In her essay, Wei describes the exhibition as “a captivating and informative look at the globalized human and political comedy in which imported aesthetics collide with native ideologies to create strange and at times wonderful fusions.”

Events held in conjunction with the exhibition included a celebration of the Chinese New Year featuring acrobatic lion dancers.

For more information on the exhibition or to order a catalog, contact the museum online here.

Under the suggestive title “Joyas Latinoamericanas” (Latin American Jewels), Art Space Virginia Miller Galleries, in Miami, offered us a balanced account of the contemporary art in the region. The presence of great figures, such as, José Clemente Orozco and Francisco Toledo (Mexico); Gina Pellón and Wifredo Lam (Cuba); Ramón Oviedo (Dominican Republic); Elmar Rojas (Guatemala), coexists in frank dialogue with mid-career artists like Michelle Concepción (Puerto Rico), Marco Tulio (Colombia), Humberto Castro (Cuba), Mateo Argüelles Pitt (Argentina), Enrique Campuzano and Soledad Salamé (Chile), Sergio Garval (Mexico).

Passing the threshold of the gallery, the viewer is challenged by a small vibrant jade green rareté. Untitled, 1978, Gunther Gerzso (Mexico, 1915-2000) arouses particular interest. This lovely painting is unusual due to its small size (only 6 ½ x 6 ½ inches). Gerzso’s pictorial universe is characterized by the use of space as a dramatic compositional element. Consequently, the medium or large-scale emphasizes the monumental nature of his proposal. It is a universe dominated by the geometric abstraction, where greens, ochres and blues create enigmatic compositions: architectural structures that seem inspired by the colossal pre-Columbian Mexican heritage; topographies of the vast and disparate Mexican landscape where woodlands, sea and desert become unfathomable forces and archetypes of the soul.

El Cano mudo, 1993, is a fury. The imposing expressionist painting by Arnaldo Roche-Rabell (Puerto Rico, 1955) captures our attention at once. A whirlwind of strident, hurtful yellow lines, takes us into the excitement and frenzy of a cockfight, where everything is dominated by passion, that passion that only stops at death. The canvas appears as a snapshot of the climax moment of the fight where individuality disappears to embody one unique entity, a single delusional force: tremendous, fiery, fatal. Roche-Rabell’s artworks are the result of the tremendous collusion -and collision- between the popular imagination and reality. The rites and traditions of the Borinquén become a metaphorical point of departure for the tireless scrutiny of the forces, fears and passions of man.

Sharing the same room, in an obvious face-to-face contrast, highlights the almost mystical quietness of On the Center: A Tree, 1990. This canvas is the expression of a fundamental concern, which has guided Antonio Henrique Amaral’s artistic production over the years: the devastating and disastrous deforestation of the Amazon. The tree in the center is almost a deity, an object of worship, an animistic force and the pinnacle of the history and culture of one of the world’s last natural places of refuge. The oppressive metal teeth of the saw fence act as a threatening decorative border, which irreverently menaces the survival of core values: our nature and mystic legacy.

Soledad Salamé (Santiago, Chile, 1972) delights us with her very eloquent video Fusión (Fusion), a testimony to her environmental interests – the poetic and continually changing abstract compositions generated by the constant flow of rhythm in the song of life: the precious nature of water presented as a vital, animated element and a metaphor for memory and remembrance. This ecological interest has guided Salamé throughout her entire career, appearing as a recurring element in her paintings, photographs, videos and sculptures. Concerns like global warming, contamination, and solar energy distinguish her very contemporary poetics. Her fascination with time – another essential, natural component latent in all her works – finds perfect fulfillment in her multimedia artwork, where rhythm, sequence and interdependence speak to the interrelatedness of the world we inhabit.

“Joyas Latinoamericanas” is a balanced, interesting selection, as well as a graceful polyphony of the contemporary art of the region.

Urban Cries, 34 x 18 1/8 inches (61 x 46 cm), 2006, Oil on Canvas

As with so much Chinese contemporary art, the sensuous women depicted by Wang Niandong are more than meets the eye, according to one critic. Chinese artist Wang Niandong frequently superimposes a young woman against an urban background with butterflies, gazelles or other symbolic references to nature.

Most critics think the butterflies refer to a transformative effect, suggesting that clothes—or in Wang’s case, lack of them—or cosmetics have changed a young woman into a sexual commodity. At least one of the artist’s paintings refer to Japanese art, however, and in Japanese culture butterflies also connote promiscuity, thus the artist may be lamenting a lapse in traditional sexual restraint.

According to Dr. Bobbie Allen, “Chinese art is exploding in the world market because the art world has been flooded with imitations of Western styles. Collectors hungry for the ‘contemporary’ without the ‘weird’ or abstract snatch up nostalgic landscapes or romantic portraits executed with immaculate technique and virtually no origin.

“Wang, it seems to me, has put all his women in this position. She (Wang’s archetypal woman) always seems to me to be like Chinese art itself, which can no longer look back on its past, but rather than forging a new future for itself, puts on the lurid clothes of American capitalism and sells herself like hotcakes.”

Clowns, Money, Plane and Love, 11 3/4 x 47 1/4 inches (30 x 120 cm), Oil on Canvas, , 2007

Born in 1978 in Sichuan Province, Wang attended Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing and completed his graduate work in the oil painting department of Sichuan Fine Art Institute in 2002

See more on Wang Niandong

Aaron Karp, Cachara Dancer, acrylic on canvas, 52x48 inches, 2004

El Arte abstracto como lenguaje visual tiene la peculiaridad de haberse desprendido del pesado fardo de la representación visual. Así, línea, color y textura se confabulan para crear universos disímiles donde el espacio y la tensión entre elementos constitutivos es fundamental. Del efectivo manejo de estos componentes, depende definitivamente el éxito de la obra abstracta y su poder evocador.

Five Abstracts Visions (Cinco visiones abstractas) es el título bajo el cual la galería ArtSpace/Virginia Miller, con sede en Coral Gables, nos ofrece las visiones de cinco pintores abstractos con propuestas bien diversas. La exposición constituye una oportunidad para acercarse a artistas en plena expansión de sus carreras cuya pasión por la abstracción los ha llevado a la creación de propuestas bien personales y sugerentes.

Andy Moses (Los Angeles, 1962) and Michelle Concepción (Puerto Rico, 1970) parecen interesados en explorar la abstracción como desafío a la limitación natural de la pintura: su bidimensionalidad. Ambos juegan con las nociones de profundidad y movimiento exigiendo un espectador activo y los dos están interesados en la exploración del cosmos.

Michelle parece atraída por la microescala. Sus pinturas parecen vistas obtenidas a través de un microscopio que nos permite acceso al mundo insospechado de organismos unicelulares, protozoarios, que se acompasan en grácil movimiento. La obra de Moses, en cambio, participa del denominado flow painting, una pintura interesada en la impresión de movimiento continuo o flujo. Moses se vale de pintura traslúcida y perlada. El tiempo de preparación del pigmento es esencial así como la viscosidad que va ganando el mismo. Todo ello, aunado a la luz –en tanto elemento constitutivo de la obra– genera una composición siempre cambiante. A ello contribuye el uso de la superficie cóncava que amplifica la sensación de fluido que el espectador experimenta mientras se traslada de un extremo a otro de la obra. Inspirado en fenómenos físicos y naturales, la obra de Moses es una experiencia gratificante.

Florian Depenthal, 54 x 42 inches, Shattered Splendor, 1993, Oil on Canvas

Por su parte, la propuesta de Aaron Karp, pintor americano que ha vivido en Nuevo México por más de 30 años, nos introduce en un complejo entramado multicolor. Copioso tejido potenciador de ritmos y combinaciones cromáticas riquísimas, los cuadros de Karp son el pasaje propicio a mundos de ensoñación donde el elemento lúdico destaca. Sus lienzos parecen por momentos fabulaciones arquitectónicas: cúpulas caprichosas de ascendencia morisca o complejos mosaicos. Otras veces, el elemento musical se impone por el juego con el tempo –armónicos y disonancias– que anima su obra.

Por último, las propuestas de Florian Depenthal y Linda Touby encuentran como punto de comunión el rejuego con el elemento textural en tanto medio expresivo fundamental.

Linda Touby, Homage to Giotto 414, Oil and Wax on Canvas, 56 x 56 inches, 2009

Los deslumbrantes lienzos de Florian Depenthal (Karlsruhe, Alemania, 1955) denotan una alta carga expresiva. El pigmento es aplicado con espátula dejando la huella enfática del estado anímico que motiva cada trazo. El artista, sin embargo, a ratos se detiene en pequeños detalles, raspando aquí y allá con el mango del pincel, dejando pequeñas notas cifradas dominadas por un acento íntimo. Los títulos dejan a veces entrever conexiones con el mundo real que inspira al artista. Tal es el caso de Splendor (Esplendor), 1993.

Al adentrarse en la sala, el espectador queda cautivo de la obra de Linda Touby (Nueva York, 1946). Su propuesta engrana en la tradición del expresionismo abstracto americano, lo mismo que su formación. Touby estudió en la Art Students’ League (Liga de Estudiantes de Arte) de Manhattan teniendo como compañero de clases a Richard Pousette-Dart, uno de los miembros más jóvenes de la Escuela de Nueva york. De proporciones medianas, la colosal propuesta está impregnada de una fuerza evocadora impresionante que nos transporta a través del tiempo y la Historia del Arte hasta la Edad Media tardía. Su más reciente serie Homage To Giotto (Homenaje al Giotto), es el resultado del paciente estudio de la obra del maestro italiano.

Andy Moses, 20 x 30 inches, Departure at Dawn, 2007, Acrylic on Concave Canvas

La serie destaca en primera instancia a nivel táctil. Touby ha logrado recrear la sensación de la pintura al fresco. Este procedimiento pictórico mural a base la cal y pigmentos minerales fue empleado desde la Antigüedad. De gran resistencia al paso del tiempo, debemos a esta técnica una parte considerable del legado artístico que llega a nuestros días. Avida investigadora del color y las posibilidades de los pigmentos, Touby consigue recrear la peculiar atmósfera del fresco a partir del óleo y la cera. La artista selecciona meticulosamente los colores empleados atendiendo a la técnica recreada y a la paleta del artista homenajeado en la serie.

Michelle Concepción, Blue across with yellow and orange, 59 x 39.25 inches, acrylic on canvas, 2007

Su obra participa de un rejuego con la historia, fabulando con la abstracción y la figuración. De gran nivel alegórico, sus tranquilas composiciones de franjas horizontales de colores de evocación mineral, nos traen de regreso a un paralelo más cercano (muchos son los que ven en la obra de Touby la presencia de Rothko). Es curioso como la artista ha logrado desde el lenguaje abstracto, resumir el hálito subyacente en la obra figurativa de Giotto a través de la simulación de la técnica, la cuidadosa selección del color y el trabajo por franjas que nos recuerda el uso fragmentado del plano en el maestro italiano como sugerencia de perspectiva.

Five Abstracts Visions es una travesía agradable para el ojo avisado y para el amante general del arte, uno de esos viajes que no deberíamos privarnos.

`Five Abstracts Visions’, en ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, hasta el 20 de febrero, 169 Madeira Avenue, Coral Gables, 33134. http://www.virginiamiller.com, (305) 444-4493.

Marco Tulio, Untitled, 57 x 64 1.4 inches, 2007, Oil on Canvas

A major article in the Christian Science Monitor (The heart of Latin art By Gloria Goodale) on the unprecedented number of major exhibitions of Latin American art around the nation features a painting by Marco Tulio and quotes a museum director who singles it out as an example of magical realism.

“La Montera” (The Bullfighter’s Hat”) depicts a pensive young woman draped in a sheet, seated in a bullfighting ring. Near her are flower petals and the toreador’s cap. His cape is draped across a nearby barrier. Looking on are two sinister characters, one holding a scythe.

The painting is one of the six loaned by ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries to the Naples Museum of Art for its “Latin American Painting Now” exhibition of works by 50 artists being shown until Jan. 10th. The newspaper article states:

“The contemporary Latin American artists on display at the Naples (Fla.) Art Museum vividly carry forward many of the characteristics that have traditionally defined Latin art. ‘Vibrant colors, figurative imagery, and a joyful embrace of everyday objects,’ says director Michael Culver.

“He points to such artists as Marco Tulio, whose work ‘The Bullfighter’s Hat’ offers a contemporary spin on traditional elements of Latin American art. ‘He paints like the old masters with layers on layers that create a fine, wonderful surface that looks immaculate – almost like a photo – but also almost surreal in the way he places the object,’ says Mr. Culver, adding that it also evokes another traditional Latin theme — magical realism, in which simple objects take on meaning.”

Other paintings from the gallery loaned to the Naples exhibition are by Alfredo Arcia, Humberto Castro, Michelle Concepción, Ramón Oviedo and Elmar Rojas.

Joyas Latinoamericanas

‘Straw turns to gold in the Gables’
By Carlos Suarez De Jesus,
published: June 18, 2009, Miami New Times

Leave it to Virginia Miller to find the silver lining in an economic storm.

Despite the tribulations of the art world in an increasingly stagnant sales environment, the Coral Gables dealer is putting on an eclectic summer group show. Just don’t call it a clearance blowout, please.

Where most dealers wouldn’t dare exhibit the work of masters alongside that of relative unknowns, Miller welcomes the risk with aplomb in “Joyas Latinoamericanas,” an exhibit including paintings by titans Wifredo Lam and José Clemente Orozco smack next to whippersnappers such as Marco Tulio and Sergio Garval.

The show features mostly paintings, by more than a dozen Latin American artists, spanning nearly 80 years. It’s presented in a cavalcade of styles that blend surprisingly well thanks to Miller’s deft eye.

Miller says that because of the recession, private owners are offloading long-cherished works, in some cases masterpieces, offering the general public a chance to see art previous off-limits.

Among the highlights of the exhibition is a 1930 oil-on-canvas titled Dama Sofisticada (Sophisticated Dame), created with rough, slashing strokes by the late Mexican muralist Orozco. The hardcover-size work depicts a peasant woman whose face is seen from a side view and loosely rendered in thick, irregular red, orange, and turquoise daubs of paint. Her tangled raven tresses are suggested by a tarry black wash.

Also on view is a handful of Lam paintings, including an unusual early gouache-on-cardboard from 1942. Lam, who freighted his paintings with rich Afro-Cuban symbolism, evokes a tenebrous penumbra of light and darkness in a 1970 three-foot oil-on-canvas — depicting a totemic, stylized bird — that exudes a mysterious, almost primitive veneer.

Lam’s eerie fowl nearly suffers by comparison next to Arnaldo Roche Rabell’s painting of a fighting cock. The dynamic bed sheet-size expressionistic work bristles with a rustic barnyard vibe. El Cano Mudo is rendered in a dizzying swirl of yellow, orange, red, purple, and blue tones that powerfully rip across the canvas to convey a sense that the rooster is about to burst from the surface. The Puerto Rican painter’s opus seems scratched out from sun-baked soil.

Across from it, Guatemala’s Elmar Rojas is represented by three oils from 1991 that refer to the folklore of his homeland. The artist furiously works over his canvases with paint and then repeatedly sands them down until their bright, bejeweled surfaces feel like kid lamb Gucci leather to the touch. One of these works, ironically titled El Gran Consejo de Espantapájaros (Grand Counsel of Scarecrows), depicts what appear to be shamans gathered at a seashore. It’s a stunning tropical palette reminiscent of Rufino Tamayo’s work.

Another artist who seduces the senses is Brazil’s Antônio Amaral, whose phosphorescent, five-foot canvas, On the Center: A Tree, offers a stinging commentary on the rapacious deforestation of the Amazon. The painting’s edges are surrounded by a menacing rusty sawtooth border buzzing into an inner tree canopy of lush emerald leaves that frame a solitary burning tree trunk. The trunk glows bright red at the center of the composition. Its branches are tipped by billowing clouds of smoke.

Among the younger, mid-career artists on display is Argentina’s Mateo Arguelles Pitt, who often uses pugilists in his whimsical, deceptively simple paintings as a metaphor for confronting the challenging vagaries of life. One of his large mixed-media-on-panel works, Miércoles 3 (Wednesday the 3rd), portrays a Lilliputian palooka standing in front of a heavy punching bag that dwarfs him. The boxer is unfazed and holds outs his mitts as if ready and eager to tackle his daunting exercise and deliver a knockout blow.

Mexico’s Sergio Garval also packs a punch. His wall-swallowing, lavishly textured painting The Cord features a woman trying to balance herself like a trapeze artist on a stack of ornate furniture floating in a dazzling mother-of-pearl-hued void. The artist seems to be hinting at overcoming adversity against the odds.

Garval’s work is among the most beguiling on exhibit, drawing the viewer like a moth to a flame. An arresting charcoal-on-canvas painting titled The Corporation-Reconstructing Eden is remarkable for its exquisite execution and the haunting imagery of a dystopian world. It shows the burned-out shells of cars crowned by rotting potted plants and zombie-like people walking atop the rusted hulks while dreaming of re-creating paradise anew. The work’s discomfiting tones convey notions of the automobile industry in crisis or the aftermath of a natural disaster.

While at the gallery, slip into the rear storage area for a glimpse of Marco Tulio’s eerie, almost operatic vision of the consequences of a bullfight gone awry. In La Montera, the matador is nowhere to be seen, but a naked young woman, cocooned in a white shawl and sporting a sardonic grin, kneels in the ring. Behind her, two dastardly oafs, with malice dripping from their lips, leer at the clueless girl. One of the men hides a scythe behind his back as if contemplating severing her head. The self-taught Colombian artist, whose parents are both painters, has an incredibly gifted hand and quite an eye for heightening the sense of drama in his images.

On the way out, don’t miss Mexican master Gunther Gerzso’s luminous abstract geometric painting, measuring slightly larger than your average postcard and dating from 1978. The rare and precious gem makes a compelling argument for visiting the gallery’s trove — not to mention witnessing Miller’s knack for turning a potentially straw proposition into gold.

“We presently are offering truly outstanding works by both Neel and Roche-Bell,” noted gallery owner-director Virginia Miller. “These may be seen on our web site, virginiamiller.com, by clicking under Artists and then Masters.”

According to an article in the April 14, 2009 online art review, artdaily.org, the exhibition “Paint Made Flesh” presents works created between 1952 and 2006 in Europe and the United States tracing “figurative paintings powerful personal and social commentary.” The article goes on to state:

“ Artists such as Alice Neel, whose unflinching paintings are among the most powerful portraits of the 20th century, distorted the anatomy of their subjects and used an unusual color palette to express the themes of poverty, despair, and turmoil.” For more information on Neel, see our Feb. 20, 2009 gallery blog, which includes her 1927 watercolor titled “Contrasts,” in which the lifelong socialist depicts the dominance of an affluent society matron over a diminutive, less fortunate woman.

For more information on Arnaldo Roche-Rabell, one of the leading artists of Puerto Rico, see his gallery blog dated Oct. 26, 2007, which includes an illustration of a major work available at the gallery. “This incredibly powerful painting catches viewers in its swirls of furious movement,” says Virginia Miller.

The article further notes that “Paint Made Flesh was organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee. The curator is Mark W. Scala, chief curator of the Frist. After its presentation at the Phillips, the exhibition will be on view at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, N.Y., from Oct. 25 to Jan. 3, 2010.”

Largely inspired by his 45-year friendship with the famed Chilean painter Roberto Matta, Carone’s paintings recently took a turn toward a more patterned abstraction.

According to the artist, the new subtly toned works “seem to be an opening of a new door of automatism.

“The approach is similar to the past works but the image is arrived at more spontaneously and graphically,” Carone says. “Subconscious symbols and rhythmic gestures relating to each other or canceling each other out seem to be the building blocks to the final statement.

“The seed,” he acknowledges, “was planted by Matta.”

Like the abstract expressionists, Carone seeks “a spontaneous image as a consequence of a gesture…dictated more by the subconscious than by a rational, disclplined procedure.”

Carone became interested in art as an adolescent during the summer of 1944, when he was asked to model for Hans Hoffman. His older brother, the well-known painter Nicolas Carone, was studying with Hoffman.

Through his brother and years of involvement in art, Carone has had a close association with many of the era’s most famous artists and critics, including Conrad Marca-Relli, James Brooks, Paul Jenkins, Sandro Chia, Larry Rivers, Balcolm Greene, James Rosenquist, Duane Hanson, Thomas Hoving, Clement Greenberg and many others.

His extensive professional biography lists one-person exhibitions in such museums as the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, the Boca Raton Museum, and the Palazzo Panni Museum in Arco di Trento, Italy, along with numerous leading private galleries.

View artworks here