Tag Archives: Arts & Events

Joan Waltemath in Conversation with Christine de Lignieres on The Finch

Joan Waltemath sat down with Christine de Lignieres for TheFinch.Net to discuss her work, philosophy, life and death. Waltemath’s drawings are on view at Anita Rogers Gallery through November 11, 2017.

Christine de Lignieres: Your work is visually related to a high — modernist formalism that includes Bauhaus, De Stijl, Mondrian … to aesthetic movements, at a certain period in history. Do you feel a kinship with those artists?

Joan Waltemath: I don’t really approach my work stylistically in relation to Modernism because the kind of geometry that I’m working with is so old, and I mean mostly it’s been used in architecture. If you look at plans from Gothic and Romanesque churches, from the pyramids, the Ziggurats — these geometric forms obey certain mathematical laws of nature. That’s the basis of the grid I work on using harmonic ratios. The lineage of modernism is something that I’m obviously in tune with, but my focal point is more on the timeless nature of the geometry itself and how it’s able to open certain doors of perception.

When I was growing up in Nebraska, the things I looked at were the Plains Indian beadwork and painted hides. I remember that many people were really astounded by the beauty of the Plains Indian show at the MET a couple of years ago and for me that was also a great moment, but a very familiar one that had already impressed me. I could identify most of the pieces in the show, whether I had seen them before — or only in books and often I would know what museums they are in or what part of the country or world. The Plains Indian works and ceremonial objects are really my deepest connection to art. There’s a certain dichotomy between their apparent resemblance to modernism and their actual roots in a much more ancient worldview — and that is true of my own work to some degree as well.

Read the full interview on TheFinch.net

Hamptons Art Hub Highlights “Works on Paper”

New shows of all kinds are opening in New York City galleries this week. Art galleries in Chelsea, Uptown, Downtown and Brooklyn are hosting solo shows, group exhibitions and retrospective surveys. Viewers can check out sculpture that toes the line between childlike and creepy, portraits that are intimate looks into realistic or imaginary worlds and drawings that defy expectations.

DOWNTOWN — Anita Rogers Gallery: “Works on Paper: Drawings by Gordon Moore, George Negroponte, Morgan O’Hara and Joan Waltemath”

October 11 through November 11, 2017

Opening Reception: Wednesday, October 11, from 6 to 8 p.m.

Anita Rogers Gallery presents “Work on Paper: Drawings by Gordon Moore, George Negroponte, Morgan O’Hara and Joan Waltemath,” a group exhibition that aims to celebrate drawing as a primary form of artistic communication.

View the full article on HamptonsArtHub.com

Visit AnitaRogersGallery.com

Works on Paper: Drawings by Gordon Moore, George Negroponte, Morgan O’Hara and Joan Waltemath

It all goes back to drawing. – Gordon Moore

Anita Rogers Gallery presents Works on Paper, an exhibition of drawings by Gordon MooreGeorge NegroponteMorgan O’Hara and Joan Waltemath. The exhibition will be on view October 11 – November 11, 2017 at the gallery’s new location at 15 Greene Street, Ground Floor in SoHo, New York. There will be an opening reception on Wednesday, October 11, 6-8pm.

Collectively, the works in the exhibition reflect on the intimate nature of drawing. The pieces allow the viewer to engage with the artists and their processes in an exceptionally close manner. The show aims to celebrate drawing as not only fundamental to the artist’s practice but as a primary form of artistic communication.

gn-bluedit
Moore works in an innovative way; the grounds for his drawings are sheets of developed photo emulsion paper. He then draws on top of and in response to the elements present in the paper. There is an unusual depth to the final pieces – they challenge the viewers’ natural perceptions. Moore (b. 1947, Iowa) has pieces in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), Yale University Art Gallery (CT), Baltimore Museum of Art (MD), General Electric Corporation (OH), the Krannert Art Museum (IL) and Kinkead Pavilion (IL).

gn-card
Negroponte will exhibit a series of drawings spanning from 1996 to 2016, each constructed from several pieces of paper, painted, cut and then placed back together in different configurations. On this work, Negroponte states, “Primacy counts more than anything right now. I want to get down to the barest essence: discarding the object for a trace or glimpse of it residing in the weight of each mark or shape.” Negroponte (b. 1953, New York) has work in the collections of the Harvard University Art Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Waltemath makes mindful drawings; they are studies for her Torso/Roots series of paintings and will be on view unframed. Like her paintings they are based on a grid derived from harmonic mathematical relationships but, here, the handmade paper acts as both the ground and frame for the grid.  Its presence is as prominent and powerful as her paint. At once lush and subtle, her works on paper are delicate glimpses into her process. Waltemath (b. 1953, Nebraska) is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Hammer Museum and the Harvard University Art Museum.

mailchimp2

Gloria Ortiz-Hernández at the Morgan Library and Museum

Gloria Ortiz-Hernández’s Plate/Shift #10 (2006, Graphite pencil, charcoal powder, and pigment on wove paper, 22″ x 22″) is currently on view at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. The piece is part of the museum’s permanent collection. Gift of Sally and Howard Lepow.

Notes from the museum: plateshift10

In 1998, Gloria Ortiz-Hernandez gave up the brightly colored figurative paintings that she had been doing for years and began drawing simple geometric forms. Like many of these drawings, Plate/Shift #10 belongs to a series in which the artist explores different combinations of a similar composition. Made of numerous layers of almost imperceptible strokes the subtle gradation from dark to light suggests volume and depth, and gives this deceptively simple composition a great tactile beauty. The drawing is typical of Ortiz-Hernandez’s work in its fusion of a minimalist aesthetic with an exquisite sense of refinement.

View more on AnitaRogersGallery.com

Visit the Morgan Library and Museum website

Anita Rogers Gallery in Southampton, NY in Collaboration with Laviano Design Studio

Works by Virva Hinemo, Gordon Moore, George Negroponte and Kazimira Rachfal are on view at 77 Jobs Lane, Southampton, NY through October 1 in collaboration with Laviano Design Studio.

View more on the gallery’s website: http://www.anitarogersgallery.com/

More information on Laviano Design Studio: https://www.lavianodesignstudio.com/

Making and Looking at Art May Reduce Depression and Doctor Visits, Report Suggests

We all know that art can change your life, but what about helping to save it? A new report has found evidence that the arts bring a wide range of health benefits, speeding medical recoveries and improving overall quality of life. Released last week in the U.K., “Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing” details numerous instances where the arts offered medical improvements for those of every age. That includes art therapy (which reduced agitation in those with dementia) and music (lullabies were seen to calm the heart, lessening the hospital stays for newborn children in neonatal intensive care).

Read the full post on Artsy.com

Blouin ArtInfo Features Joan Waltemath: Fecund Algorithms

Fecund Algorithms,” an exhibition of works by artist Joan Waltemath (b.1953) started on April 5 and will run through May 13, 2017 at Anita Rogers Gallery, New York.

The selection of works on display features new paintings from the artist’s ‘Torso/Roots’ series. The new paintings by Waltemath were created with a range of unique materials including oil, graphite and various metallic and fluorescent pigments on aluminum panels, many of which took years for the artist to complete.

The artworks deal with the complex and inextricable relationships between the human body and the mind, the physical and the spiritual and art, architecture and the natural world. Due to the reflective and absorbent nature of the pigments used in the paintings, new details can be observed when viewed from different perspectives at different times of the day, hence every interaction with one of the panels is a new experience.

View more on BlouinArtInfo.com

Rounding the Corner: Joan Waltemath at Anita Rogers

Sharon Butler of Two Coats of Paint Interviews Joan Waltemath

In “Fecund Algorithms,” a solo exhibition of new paintings and diminutive sewn-canvas works, Joan Waltemath diverts gently from the quiet perfection of her previous work to embrace small accidents and contingencies. On view at Anita Rogers’s new light-filled second-floor gallery in Soho, Waltemath’s work looks exquisite in the elegantly appointed room, which boasts Greek columns and a long wall of oversized windows facing Mercer Street. Her pristine surfaces and cleanly delineated lines have become scruffier, less refined, and, arguably, more satisfying. A slightly less rigorous approach has yielded interesting insights about spontaneity, uncertainty, and impermanence.

In a conversation at the gallery, I asked the artist about the smudges, scrapes, corrections, and brush strokes that were visible on the surfaces. Waltemath shrugged, suggesting that she feels more comfortable than she used to in leaving residue and mistakes that reveal the process. Elements that she might have corrected or erased now strike her as telling records of the challenges and decisions most painters of geometric shape have to address, concealed or not. Even the tiny black and white pieces made of canvas scraps sewn together by utilitarian machine stitching have an offhand air that evidences Waltemath’s seasoned eye and hand. The painted lines and sewn pieces are not perfect, but here that’s a gift: within essentially mechanical forms, the quirky inconsistencies provide a frisson of humanity.

The paintings, Waltemath told me, also explore the mysteries of human interaction and memory. Lines and shapes painted in subtle ranges of white (impossible to apprehend in JPEG format) deftly organize and occupy the two-dimensional surface of her panels. Upon longer observation, they seem to move, advancing and receding, and creating three-dimensional forms with shifting spatial relationships. From this perspective, Waltemath sees an analogy in the way friendships and other alliances evolve, expanding, contracting, and sometimes reemerging over time. Certainly Waltemath’s new work artfully and unobtrusively, yet very assuredly, reveals its creator’s encounters, thoughtfully marrying content, form, and process.

View More on TwoCoatsOfPaint.Com