Category Archives: Events

GALLERY SHOWS NYC Selected Gallery Guide: July, 2023

Rachel Nicholson, 4 Objects with Pink Blue Grey, 2017, Acrylic on board, 8″ x 10″

The best painting-centric guide to art galleries in NYC, Brooklyn, and Queens / Thanks in part to the Canadian wildfires, the hazy days of July are underway. They are perhaps not so lazy, though, as many artists are working full-throttle in the studio, hatching new ideas or preparing for upcoming exhibitions while dragging themselves away to openings at the summer group shows. I know I say it every year, but I love the off-season. Look for a listing update next week.

–Sharon Butler

Soho

Anita Rogers Gallery / 494 Greenwich Street, ground floor, New York, NY / Rachel Nicholson, A mug, a spoon and a landscape / closes Aug 26

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BLAST Art Market Report: Mark Rothko X William Scott

How many artists bathe in the reflected glory of stars like the American Abstract Expressionist, Mark Rothko (auction record $87 million)? Some are simply pastiches, existing to decorate wall space. Others bear more serious consideration accruing value by association. Thus New York dealer, Anita Rogers finds it stimulating to pair British artist William Scott (auction record a mere £1 million) with Rothko in her latest exhibition which runs until 3 June. The two crossed paths on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1950s, corresponded and compared notes. The pairing will, says Rogers, “solidify [Scott’s] significance, and offer new insight into their relationship and mutual admiration.”

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East Side Feed Features Mark Rothko and William Scott

Anita Rogers Gallery Presents Mark Rothko and William Scott: Continuing the Dialogue

By Bobby Panza

Portrait of William Scott (on left) with Mark Rothko (on right) at the Scott home in England. 1959. Photo by James Scott. © James Scott.

When Mark Rothko and William Scott first met in New York in 1953, both painters were at a pivotal time in their lives. Introduced by gallery owner Martha Jackson, Rothko and Scott had each evolved their artistic roots from figurative painting and were now charting new waters in the world of abstraction. The relationship between these twentieth-century masters is at the center of a thrilling new exhibition coming to Anita Rogers Gallery at 494 Greenwich Street from April 26 to June 3.

Large-scale works on canvas will be accompanied by preparatory drawings on paper as well as correspondence between the two artists. This historic pairing of Rothko (1903-1970) and Scott (1913-1989) has never been done before.

Left: Mark Rothko Untitled (Red, Yellow, Blue, Black and White), 1950 Oil on canvas 67 1/2h x 38 1/4w in 171.45h x 97.16w cm. Right: William Scott CBE RA, Abstract (Blue East), 1964 Oil on canvas, 73h x 48w in 185.42h x 121.92w cm

Similar to Martha Jackson who brought Rothko and Scott together, the female-owned Anita Rogers Gallery has been known for fostering relationships between artists, as well as collectors and lovers alike, since it opened its doors in 2016. This unprecedented exhibition will not only feature the relationship and mutual admiration Rothko and Scott had for one another, but also the influence and respect of opinion they had for one another, as both artists were also immigrants.

Rothko immigrated to New York City from Latvia in 1913 while Scott grew up in Scotland before moving to England to study at the Royal Academy Schools in 1931. Scott would eventually earn the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1966 for his contributions to art.

In the summer of 1959, the Rothko family were guests at the Scott’s cottage in Somerset, England. Both sides discussed concerns over placing art in public spaces, as well as their experiences as immigrants.

Now, the children of Mark Rothko (Christopher and Kate) and William Scott (James) will continue the dialogue at a special discussion at Anita Rogers Gallery on May 9. You can register for this free event here.

Anita Rogers Gallery is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The gallery will be publishing a full-color catalog featuring an essay by David Anfam, art historian and author of Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas.

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ArtForum Must See: MARK ROTHKO and WILLIAM SCOTT

Installation view of MARK ROTHKO and WILLIAM SCOTT: Continuing the Dialogue (2023).

Photo by Jon-Paul Rodriguez

Thank you to ArtForum for listing our current exhibition, MARK ROTHKO and WILLIAM SCOTT: Continuing the Dialogue as a must-see exhibition. On view through June 3.

Book Launch | William Scott: A Family History by Cardwell McClure

The Friends of Fermanagh County Museum is organising a book launch on Saturday, 22 April, at Enniskillen Castle, showcasing Cardwell’s “William Scott: A Family History” publication.

Every Picture Tells a Story (90 mins) feature film based on the early life of William Scott, directed by James Scott with Alex Norton, Phyllis Logan and Natasha Richardson will be shown as part of this event.

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ABOUT THE BOOK:

The author of this family history is Cardwell McClure, son of Mary McClure, née Scott, the younger sister of renowned artist William Scott CBE, RA.  Cardwell remembers how his mother told him that William, when a teenager, would get his younger sister to sit for him lacking any other willing members of the family.

This book provides a first hand experience of the family’s trials through poverty, tragedy, war and fame.

There are twelve chapters in the book, eleven of which are devoted to each child, while the first chapter outlines the family beginnings in Glasgow, Scotland.

As Paul Teggart, the editor of the book says:  “It is a wonderful story of triumph over adversity, sadness and happiness, and family loyalty.  I can say, without a doubt, that the book is a labour of love and has only been completed after many years of dedicated research and a fine eye to detail by its author Cardwell McClure. It makes good reading whether you look at it from a family point of view or from an educational standpoint in examining the life and work of William Scott the artist.”   A chronology of the Scott family dating from 1887 to 2022 is also being published alongside the Family History.

The Family History book can be bought on Amazon via the following link: www.amazon.co.uk

William Scott: A Family History which has taken many years in research, writing and editing partly due to the ill health of the author, Cardwell McClure, is lavishly illustrated with paintings by William Scott CBE RA.

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Meer Spotlights Jack Martin Rogers

Jack Martin Rogers, Knossos, c. 1974, Oil on canvas, 56 1/2h x 84w in

Anita Rogers Gallery is proud to present Peregrination: from past to present, a solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper by British artist Jack Martin Rogers (1943-2001).

Peregrination takes the viewer on a journey through the artist’s lifetime and his travels through Britain, Turkey, Italy, and the Greek islands. Through paintings, sketches, and watercolor studies spanning over forty years, the exhibition offers insight into the mind of a painter, musician, and philosopher. Birds of prey play a prominent role in Greek mythology and ancient Greek texts; indeed, Homer often uses them as omens or signs from the gods, and Calchas, the seer introduced at the beginning of the Iliad, is said to “scan the flight of birds” to understand “all things that are past and all that are to come.”

It seems fitting then that Rogers would have been drawn to observing and painting this celestial subject; the artist was a profound thinker who spent his life studying history and classical literature, alongside science, anatomy, and technology. This interest in time and the interconnectedness of past and present is evident in his work, which often depicts historical and modern themes alongside one another.

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Greek City Times Highlights Jack Martin Rogers

Jack Martin Rogers, Nude, c.1964, Oil on canvas, 29 3/4″ x 24 1/2″

NEW YORK – Anita Rogers Gallery presents ‘Peregrination: From Past to Present’, a solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper by British artist Jack Martin Rogers (1943-2001) on view March 22 through April 22 at 494 Greenwich Street in Manhattan. The gallery will host an opening reception on Wednesday, March 22, 6-8 PM.

Peregrination takes the viewer on a journey through the artist’s lifetime and his travels through Britain, Turkey, Italy, and the Greek islands. Through paintings, sketches, and watercolor studies spanning over forty years, the exhibition offers insight into the mind of a painter, musician, and philosopher.

Birds of prey play a prominent role in Greek mythology and ancient Greek texts; indeed, Homer often uses them as omens or signs from the gods, and Calchas, the seer introduced at the beginning of the Iliad, is said to “scan the flight of birds” to understand “all things that are past and all that are to come.” It seems fitting then that Rogers would have been drawn to observing and painting this celestial subject; the artist was a profound thinker who spent his life studying history and classical literature, alongside science, anatomy, and technology. This interest in time and the interconnectedness of past and present is evident in his work, which often depicts historical and modern themes alongside one another.

The show highlights major oil paintings the artist completed while living in Greece, as well as watercolor works on paper, and preliminary sketches.  A curious and intuitive man who traveled extensively, crafted his own instruments, raised a family, and dedicated himself to art, Rogers spent his life seeking light, truth, and beauty in a turbulent world. In 1984, his family home fell victim to arson and much of his work was lost. Select examples of surviving works from that time can be seen in this exhibition, complete with evidence of the devastating fire; others exist now only in photographs. The exhibition aims to provide visitors with an overview of the artist’s career, from the early 1960s through his final years painting in the 1990s.

Rogers was born in Wiltshire, UK in 1943. He was classically trained in anatomy and fine art at the Birmingham School of Art. There, he developed his meticulous methods, especially evident in his preliminary drawings. He moved to the Greek island of Crete in 1962, where, inspired by the Greek landscape, history, and architecture, he entered his most prolific artistic period. He died in 2001, leaving behind an extraordinary body of work to his daughter, gallery owner Anita Rogers. This will be the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Jack Martin Rogers Featured in The National Herald

Jack Martin Rogers, Peregrine Falcon, 1981, Gouache on paper, 10 1/2″ x 15″

NEW YORK – Anita Rogers Gallery presents ‘Peregrination: From Past to Present’, a solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper by British artist Jack Martin Rogers (1943-2001) on view March 22 through April 22 at 494 Greenwich Street in Manhattan. The gallery will host an opening reception on Wednesday, March 22, 6-8 PM.

Peregrination takes the viewer on a journey through the artist’s lifetime and his travels through Britain, Turkey, Italy, and the Greek islands. Through paintings, sketches, and watercolor studies spanning over forty years, the exhibition offers insight into the mind of a painter, musician, and philosopher.

View on TheNationalHerald.com

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Tussle Magazine Reviews Mahreen Zuberi

Mahreen Zuberi, Mapping (2), 2023, Gouache and pencil drawing on wasli, 10″ x 12″

Beyond the Surface

On Mahreen Zuberi’s Exercising the Border

At Anita Roger’s Gallery, NY

By Joanna Seifter

Meaning, an immaterial concept, is only made perceptible when merged with form, a material object–meaning’s diametric opposite. When an idea marries a surface, it creates a painting, a physical manifestation of the artist’s vision and insight. In turn, it can inspire countless meanings with audiences now and forever, inhibited to the surface’s length and width. But what if these restrictions are mitigated, even obliterated, unleashing meaning into the corporeal world in infinite directions?

These are the impenetrable concepts made accessible by “is/is not” and “in between 1/8”, the first two works featured in contemporary painter Mahreen Zuberi’s latest entry at Anita Rogers Gallery, “Exercising the Border”. Zuberi’s manifesto, deftly synthesizing metaphysical theory and poetry with fine art, is a fitting introduction to her solo show, a quietly momentous rumination on the relationship between artist and environment and the limitless potential of creativity when unfettered from imposed constraints.

The exhibition’s first illustrative painting, “is/is not (i)”, succinctly and brilliantly establishes a visual foundation that Zuberi and her audience can apply to her other works. “is/is not (i)” presents an austere, off-white rectangle on a sheet of A4 paper. “A piece of paper has 4 vertices joined by 4 lines that define its space,” proclaims text adjacent to the rectangle. Inside the rectangle reads, “Anything within the lines is paper,” establishing the shape as the surface’s focal point, a biosphere confined between the 4 vertices and 4 lines. Immediately underneath the preceding sentence and on the perimeter of the rectangle states, “Anything outside the lines is not paper,” eliminating the negative space entirely.

Each painting in Zuberi’s haunting “Crossing Over” series features geometric clusters of stars in an inky sky accented by a thick, blindingly white border, a simple yet strikingly stunning image. The borders do not outline the stars’ contours, nor do they contain them the way picture frames protect photographs. Rather, they overlap the star clusters as the forms trickle past them. When implementing Zuberi’s guidelines from “is/is not (i)”, the space surrounding the overlapping shapes and the frame is the physical world beyond the artist’s eye, the “not paper.”

The shapes’ continuance outside their white borders expands the seemingly self-contained frame, the immaterial “paper,” into the worldly realm. “Crossing Over (5)” ia a membranous structure made of stars underscores this point, suggesting its permeability. Zuberi also explores this thematic thread in her “Mapping” series. Each painting invokes colonial cartography (including aged paper and detailed studies of local fauna) while cleverly subverting its purpose (the series of lines that would ordinarily distinguish regions are fragmented, replacing divided territories with unified land), calling the arbitrarily restrictive nature of borders into question.

Like the lines in “Mapping”, “Crossing Over’s” frames also presents a series of directional lines invoking architectural drawings of three-point perspective, each of which begins outside the white border and elongates past the works’ perimeter. Zuberi also includes these lines in her “Limits” series, geometric forms atop multi-axis graphs. “The lines that stop at the edge of the paper extend beyond infinitely when extended into the imagination,” she explains in “Limit 1/8”. These directional lines are also present in Zuberi’s “Borders” series, which, like “Crossing Over”, also features starry skies. Unlike Crossing Over, Borders’ white structures vary in width, stretching from painting to painting. The frames in “Borders” resemble the negative space in film strips–ostensibly a sequence of vignettes–capturing a specific duration, implying that “Borders” is a continuous narrative as opposed to isolated images.

Series like “Borders” are a conduit to employ Zuberi’s artistic and philosophical framework to our conceptualization of time itself. “The night sky allows us to see the many pasts in cohesion,” writes Zuberi in “Possibilities 1/8”. “By developing the capacity to practice pushing borders we may find that within the limit is that which is unlimited.” “Exercising the Border” reflects Mahreen Zuberi’s keen ability to represent time surpasses intervals or even life cycles–her artworks, small in scale yet immensely powerful in scope, encompass billions of years, traversing the past, present and whatever the future may.

Kolaj Art Features Mahreen Zuberi: Exercising the Border

Installation view of Mahreen Zuberi: Exercising the Border

Photo by Jon-Paul Rodriguez

Anita Rogers Gallery is pleased to present Exercising the Border, a solo exhibition of new works on paper by Pakistani artist Mahreen Zuberi. The exhibition will be on view from February 1 through March 11, 2023 at 494 Greenwich Street, GFL, New York, NY 10013.

Zuberi was born in 1981 in Karachi, Pakistan. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts with distinction at the National College of Arts, Lahore, specializing in miniature painting with minors in printmaking and photography. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions including in Karachi, Islamabad, Milan, Dubai, and Morocco. Zuberi’s new compositions on wasli, handmade paper in use since the tenth century, are geometrically precise and yet open-ended as the night sky. In the artist’s own words:

We can measure the speed at which light travels by measuring how long it takes for it to travel from one point to another. The light from the sun takes 8.3 minutes to travel to Earth. Light travels approximately 6 million miles in one year. This is called a light year. The light from Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the sun, takes over 4 light years to reach us. The light from Deneb, the brightest star we can see with our naked eye, takes 1500 light years.  

The stars as we see them in the night sky are in the state in which they were 4 to 1500 years ago. We know that in the temporal realm time moves forward. It is not possible to see the past. However the stars, as we see them in the night sky are dioramas emanating from a distant past. 

In the night sky the distance between our eye and the many stars is not singular. The light emitted from the various stars reaches us in different numbers of light years. When we gaze up into the night sky we are witnessing events that are happening in many different temporalities, as a singular event. The night sky allows us to see the many pasts in cohesion. Time as we perceive it in the sensory or physical world is disrupted because of the very laws that govern it:

1) that light travels and 2) that the distance between our naked eye and an object emitting and reflecting light determines when we will see it. 

Though the limits of the sensory world are tied up in the laws that govern it, the positioning of the stars in the cosmos is a reminder that even within the fixed are possibilities that defy the limits set by the material world. By developing the capacity to practice pushing borders we may find that within the limits is that which is unlimited. 

For further information and photographs, please contact Elizabeth Thompson at elizabeth.thompson@anitarogersgallery.com, or call 347.604.2346. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday 10am – 6pm.

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