Tag Archives: Contemporary Art

CulturePass: A Conversation with Anita Rogers

Curator Caroline Spang sat down with Gallery Owner and Director, Anita Rogers, ahead of Taverna Rebetika, an annual celebration of Greek culture taking place Dec 1 at the Anita Rogers Gallery.

CP: How does your background and experience living in Greece influence the artists and work featured in the Anita Rogers Gallery?

AR: My parents held 1960s values. They were free spirits, educated and open humanitarians who valued folk culture. My father moved to Greece in 1962. The mentality and culture in 1980s Greece reflected 1960s Western Europe: unspoiled and carefree. This was a time when the art world had more universal meaning and depth – before the mass market idea had really taken over. My values are rooted in this time and these memories.

I approach the gallery from an artist’s point of view as I was raised by an artist who understood art as something that was in search of truth, searching to understand what it means to be human, exploring that which connects us deeply as humans, almost approaching the metaphysical but while staying rooted in the human experience and truth. This shaped my values and approach to running a gallery in NYC. I choose artists whose visual abilities are exceptional and whose aesthetic approach and philosophical ideas are in line with the beliefs I described and in line with the values that were held, as I remember them, pre-mass media and before the contemporary art scene became more of a mockery and the overblown financial marketplace that it is now.

CP: What is your process of selecting artists to work with?

AR: I can tell very quickly when I look at the work in person. I judge by looking at the work and engaging with it. The work will speak for itself. Finding artists good enough is the most challenging part of running the gallery. There has been a culture of “anything can be art” for some time. This lack of discernment results in having to wade through so much work to even start to find potential fits for us. We are only interested in art we feel has the right essence—that which will withstand the test of time. We call ourselves “incubators.”

Tristan Barlow Interviewed by Young Space

October 16, 2018

Young Space: What ideas are you exploring in your practice?

Tristan Barlow: My paintings are a mix of ideas that have built up over the years. I have a very strong relationship to art history, old Italian masters of the quattrocento, and the romanticism of ideas concerning space, ruminations of old teachers that have bounced around in my head and turned themselves into mythology. Though my paintings are, for the most part, “abstract,” I think of them more as an arena of spatial possibilities where the confluence of ideas is transformed into a visual language of symbols. Mark-making, layers, pigment, and a willing suspension of disbelief concerning the impossibilities of space lends itself to a world of visual fictions.

YS: What is your process like?

TB: I work with oil paint and that affords a plethora of possibilities. I experiment often in my application of paint. I edit, scrub, scrape, layer, etc…

Visually, my process is a filtering of ideas and notions from all sorts of sources. The idea of a mirrored image and Narcissus can send me through 20 paintings. So can a trip to the British museum or the light from a beach in Florida. Or what it would be like if Botecelli were to make a whole painting of grass and flowers? What if the Ancient Egyptians had internet?

YS: Do you have a mentor, or a piece of advice (or both), which has influenced your practice?

TB: My first professor in Mississippi, who I must give a lot of credit to, told me, “Son, in this business you gotta fish or cut bait.” That, inexplicably, has come back to mind many a time.

Access the full article on AnitaRogersGallery.com

Anita Rogers Named to the Jury of The National Association of Women Artists’ 129th Annual Exhibition

195 Chrystie Street Gallery, NYC (Lower East Side), Location of the 129th Annual Members’ Exhibition.

The National Association of Women Artists is honored to present its 129th Annual Members’ Exhibition, a show of paintings, works on paper, sculpture, mixed media, photography, and collage by established member artists. This year, the exhibit will be held at 195 Chrystie Street in the artistic heart of New York’s Lower East Side. For two weeks, members’ artworks will be on displayed 7 days of the week, just a heartbeat away from the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the International Center for Photography, the celebrated Tenement Museum and many other galleries and restaurants ideal for the gallery-going public.

The Annual Member’s Exhibition continues NAWA’s long history of nurturing and inspiring talented, visionary and dynamic women artists from throughout the United States. NAWA was founded in 1889 by five brave and innovative women who were barred from full participation in the male-dominated National Academy of Design and the Society of American Artists. Early exhibitions included works by Mary Cassatt, Suzanne Valadon among others and as the roster grew, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Louise Nevelson and Alice Neel became noted member luminaries. NAWA’s existence is a testament to the integral and essential role of women in the art world. NAWA’s president, Jill Cliffer Baratta, will be hosting the opening reception and award ceremony from 6:00 – 9:00 pm. on Thursday, October 11, 2018, with over $10,000 in awards.

This year’s lineup of jurors is an impressive one—a distinguished painter-writer-teacher, a SoHo gallery owner and a senior curator for the Brooklyn Museum.

Image result for The National Association of Women Artists' 129th Annual Exhibition

Visit AnitaRogersGallery.com for more information.

ArtSpiel Reviews Discourse: Abstract

Discourse: Abstract at Anita Rogers Gallery in SoHo, New York

Photo courtesy of Nina Meledandri

Discourse: Abstract at Anita Rogers Gallery, is an 11 person painting show; one work per artist. As with Sutures, each of the works has its own distinct style and presence. They run the gamut from small to large; some unabashedly dependent on color, while others employ a very limited palette. But where Sutures radiates energy and activity, Discourse is quiet and thoughtful; the atmosphere in the gallery is contemplative with each work demanding to be seen in its own time which the generous gallery space allows for.

The coherence of the show comes from a shared command these artists display of both materials and process. One feels these works were chosen as much to create a discussion about the current state of abstraction as to provide a gateway into further exploration of each artist’s oeuvre. Much of the work presents a concern with formal considerations but the show does not ignore conceptual exploration, gestural passages and mixed media; Lael Marshall’s piece, for example, could have easily found a home in Sutures.

At opposite ends of the exhibition (literally and figuratively) are works by Susan Smith and Mary McDonnell. Smith’s piece is one of the smallest and is composed of primary colors. It is seemingly straightforward, an initial impression that is challenged by an unexpected juxtaposition of media. What appears to be a simple formal construction of three squares becomes strangely visceral and moving in its elegant handling of materials.

McDonnell on the other hand is represented by a large work is unruly and fairly bristling with color which seems to emerge in spite of its dark palette. It is also a profoundly gestural work that is barely contained by the canvas, as if she just managed to capture the presence of some unknown force.

In between these pieces is Joan Waltemath’s painting where hard edge black forms lay atop a field of expressive and beautiful colors, reading perhaps as blips of data floating across our lives. This painting acts almost as a map of the exhibition; it has aspects of almost every work in the show containing as it does, an exploration of color, an authority of line, the power of “the edge”, an expressionist sense of abstraction and the layering of elements.

View more information at AnitaRogersGallery.com

Gordon Moore | Abstract Intention | Salina Art Center

Paintings & Works on Paper, 2007-17

On view: September 19- December 16, 2018

Salina Art Center

242 S. Santa Fe Avenue
Salina, KS 67401

Untitled, 2016, Acrylic, oil, and pumice on canvas, 65″ x 42″

Gordon Moore | Abstract Intention

The essential idea in my abstraction is to extract visual elements inherent in the ‘detritus’ of everyday life and reorder their original presence. The juxtaposition of order and chaos, of the organic and the geometric, of clarity and ambiguity, and of diffusion and resolution form the genesis of my work. Our organic lives are ‘ordered’ out of the architectural geometry which surrounds us. That paradox is rampant with potential for visual construct, the arrangement of which supplies the optic content of my work.

– Gordon Moore

Since his arrival in New York City in 1972, by way of New Haven, Connecticut, where he earned an MFA in painting at Yale University, Gordon Moore has been steadfast in his commitment to abstraction. For over four decades, Moore has devoted his studio practice to developing a deeply personal visual language with which to explore, reconcile, and transcend oppositional realities. Moore’s images reference commonplace shapes and forms encountered during daily life in the chaotic, urban environs of New York City. Venetian blinds, architectural elements, a handmade palm leaf fan, and plastic spikes used to deter pigeons from roosting are among the many objects in which he finds visual inspiration. The work in this exhibition spans the years 2007 and 2017, a period during which the artist’s ongoing investigation into the material and visual potential of photographic paper has yielded significant and powerful results. Moore’s paintings and drawings brim with a seductive uncanniness; there is a compelling and enigmatic ambiguity at work in the interplay among line, plane, and space. One is never certain about what one is seeing. Free of irony and pregnant with metaphoric potential, Moore’s imagery works toward a reconciliation of extremes — visually, materially, and otherwise.

exhibition programming

Lunch & Learn with Gordon Moore
Wednesday, September 19, 12-1 p.m. Bring a sack lunch, refreshments provided.

Opening Exhibition Reception & Artist Talk
Thursday, September 20, 6-8 p.m. Talk at 7 p.m.

Guided Exhibition Tours
October 13, November 10, December 8, 2 p.m.
All programming is free & open to the public.

Details on Salina Art Center Website

Anita Rogers Gallery Participates in Tribeca Art + Culture Night

June 21, 2018

Tribeca Art+Culture Night is a quarterly local arts festival that celebrates culture at large in Tribeca. It is free and open to the public.

This urban festival embraces the diversity of creative expression, from drawing to design, performance to crafts, music to fashion, and everything in between.

25+ Lower Manhattan venues participate to the festival, including indoor and outdoor spaces such as art nonprofits, galleries, and parks. The event brings the greater New York City community together around exhibitions, performances, talks and workshops.

Jennifer Famery-Mariani, Director and Chief Curator of TAC Night launched the festival in 2016.

On June 21, Anita Rogers Gallery will participate for the first time. Work by Mark Webber and Jack Martin Rogers will be on view; the gallery will stay open until 9pm.

View More on anitarogersgallery.com

Anita Rogers Gallery Presents Summer Group Exhibition I

Anita Rogers Gallery presents Summer Group Exhibition I, an exhibition featuring drawings by Jack Martin Rogers and sculpture by Mark Webber. The exhibition is on view from June 6 through July 14th in SoHo, New York.

Jack Martin Rogers, Pencil Portrait, 1962, Pencil on paper, 19 1/2″ x 13 3/4″

JACK MARTIN ROGERS

Jack Martin Rogers was born in Warwickshire, UK in 1945. He studied anatomy and fine art at the Birmingham School of Art. He moved to the island of Crete in Greece in 1962, which is when he began painting his most prolific work. Rogers went through many stylistic periods, ranging from fully figurative to abstract. He died in 2001, leaving behind an extraordinary body of work. Seventy-five percent of his estate is owned by his daughter, Anita Rogers.

MARK WEBBER

“Texture, composition, simplicity, and an organic element are all part of my exploration. What unfolds off the wall and/or into space must be aesthetically pleasing and embrace silence after all the work has been done. My materials all come from materials being used in modern homes.”

Mark Webber’s sculpture from his prolonged series “Structures: Walls: Portals and Vessels” explore qualities related to architecture, but are firmly sculpture. The conceptual line that divides the two, especially as manifested in “emotional architecture” as described by Mexican architect Luis Barragan, is always at play with his sculpture.

In another series “Structures: Vessels,” Webber moves away from the simplicity of the rectangle as a building plane in space and embraces a similar conceptual line in the curves found in naval architecture. With vessels, he explores what can hold space, open and closed, while referencing what defines the canoe/kayak form in sculpture.

Webber resides in Sag Harbor, NY where he has worked as a cabinetmaker for many years. There he learned the craft of making objects and put in his time to develop that ability.

Webber studied under Charles Ginnever and Peter Forakis at Windham College in Vermont. He received a BFA in sculpture at SUNY, Purchase. He has exhibited at many galleries in the Hamptons and is in several private collections on the East Coast.

Find More Information at anitarogersgallery.com

John Bingham Interviews Robert Szot

Your works appear chaotic and harmonious at the same time, tell us more about your working method.

That’s a good read and I feel the same way about my work. I never approach a painting with a preconceived notion of where it will end up and the story my process is primarily about editing. I have a hard time telling the difference between paintings on day one. They all look the same to me really. A lot of dark lines sectioning off the canvas, a bit of blotchy color here and there with no real indication of what’s to come. I struggle in the early stages because there are no real problems that I can solve, so I have to labor to create these problems. Day two is typically when a painting will begin to take on different and unique characteristics. After day two is where I excel and my process becomes very kaleidoscopic with one move opening up 10 moves and so on.

You’ve exhibited widely, including the Saatchi Gallery in London and you exhibited at Anita Rogers Gallery in New York earlier this year. How was this show, and do you become more and more selective with the places that you show as time goes by?

The Anita Rogers Gallery was something that happened just this year and it is a relationship that I am very excited to be a part of. Anita is from an artist family and exudes an excitement for good work that is infectious. She has also put together a knowledgeable and ambitious crew that frankly have been nothing short of delightful to work with. The gallery itself is so old-school Soho and is a challenge I am looking forward to tackling when I have my solo there in 2019. My introductory show with Anita Rogers this last winter was great and has only bolstered my own desire to get back in there with even better work, frankly I am giddy at the thought of it. I also continue to work with Muriel Guepin who I have been with for 8 years now. She has recently moved to Soho and taken to being more of a dealer and less of an exhibition space. She has been a great foundation for me and we have come up together in a sense. I am also working with a few galleries in California now and will be exhibiting work in LA this June.

View the full post on anitarogersgallery.com

Virva Hinnemo Featured in New York Studio Conversations (Part II): 21 Women Talk About Art

For the third volume of this ongoing series entitled New York Studio Conversations (Part II) art historian Stephanie Buhmann conducted interviews with twenty artists, whose ages range from early 41 to 96. While the featured genres, processes and aesthetic approaches vary decisively, all participants have one thing in common: they work and usually live in New York.Conceived as a counter-balance to the notion of art as a commodity, which has spread in the media with ever-soaring auction records, the project further aims to provide a permanent forum for some of the inspiring female artists working today. To this end, Buhmann has visited the artists in their studios or on site of a major public installation, discussing their unique processes, individual philosophies, inspirational sources, and personal histories.

New York Studio Conversations (Part II) introduces the following artists: Mary Abbott, Ghada Amer, Petah Coyne, Louise Fishman, Judy Glantzman, Lorrie Goulet, Julie Heffernan, Alicia Henry, Virva Hinnemo, Sharon Horvath, Julie Mehretu, Keiko Narahashi, Shirin Neshat, Leslie Roberts, Carolee Schneemann, Shahzia Sikander, Rebecca Smith, Pat Steir, Jessica Stockholder, Kim Uchiyama.

In her interview, Virva Hinnemo discusses her practice, her children, her studio rituals and her inspirations.

Excerpt:

Buhmann: There’s always beauty in the act of giving new meaning to a throwaway object by stripping it off of its former context. Suddenly, all the details, including the remnants of graphics and lettering, gather new attention; they become a secret code of sorts.

Hinnemo: Right, it’s transformative. I feel that I have a real language at this point. My work looks abstract, but I find that my forms refer to landscape, the figure, or better, a figure/ground. On other occasions, they look like letters.

View the full post on Anita Rogers Gallery’s website.

ArtNet Editors’ Picks: “Women & the Art World” at Anita Rogers Gallery

Editors’ Picks: 14 Things to See in New York This Week artnetlogo

by Sarah Cascone

Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events. See them below.

1. “Women & the Art World” at Anita Rogers Gallery
Women of Culture & ELNYA present a panel discussion about what it means to be a woman working in the male-dominated art world, featuring art dealer Anita Rogers; Danika Druttman, director of creative programming at the Roger Smith Hotel and Lisa Small, senior curator of European art at the Brooklyn Museum. The evening will include wine, snacks, and a chance to see the gallery’s current exhibition, “Virva Hinnemo: Four Feet” (on view through April 21).

View more on the gallery’s website.

Anita Rogers

Founder of Anita Rogers Gallery, British American Household Staffing, and British American Talent Management