Tag Archives: NYC

ArtCritical Pick: Virva Hinnemo

Virva Hinnemo: Half Planet Featured as Critic’s Choice on ArtCritical

TwoThingsAt times, abstract painting can seem like a received package, with little space left to think outside of the box. In Virva Hinnemo, to overplay the postal metaphor, we have an artist “pushing the envelope”—in her case, literally so. A form vocabulary and a gestural lexicon familiar from mid-century American masters Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and Philip Guston meet the swift completion of their appointed rounds on flattened cartons as their repurposed, eccentric support. This strategy could have smacked of Arte Povera, Supports/Surfaces or currently fashionable “provisional” abstraction, but somehow in the hands of this Springs, NY-based Finnish artist the work manages to come across as visually sophisticated but stylistically innocent. Their charming, unforced modernism fits right into the refreshingly old-fashioned surroundings of this plush new venue, sharing quarters with another of proprietor Anita Rogers’ enterprises and thus itself an eccentric support.

– David Cohen

View more on the gallery’s website.

Virva Hinnemo: Half Planet

May 12- June 18

Anita Rogers Gallery is pleased to present Virva Hinnemo: Half Planet, an exhibition of new works. The show, the artist’s debut at Anita Rogers Gallery, will feature three large-scale paintings on cardboard highlighting the artist’s bold abstract motifs complemented by a selection of smaller works exemplifying her intuitive and direct approach.

HalfPlanet

Hinnemo’s large paintings on cardboard are a consolidation of her work of the past decade; she fashioned the larger scale of these works by grasping and internalizing a language and then more recently by using her entire body to expand her marks and gestures. Her paintings touch upon some of the most fundamental properties of abstract painting: improvised, grand, uncluttered, and firmly planted in reality. She paints with immediacy and directness but her thick black marks are pinned down by an attentive and purposeful energy. Her smaller works offer a different exploration: they can be quirky, quick, awkward, amusing and almost entirely elusive. They read like sublimated remains that defy their nearly discarded “look”. We are left experiencing a condensation of means and an assertion of essentials.

Born in 1976 in Helsinki, Finland, Hinnemo spent time growing up between Sweden, Finland and Russia. She received her BFA in painting from Parsons School of Design in 2000. Hinnemo has exhibited in New York, Miami, Boston, Provincetown and Stockholm. Her paintings have been reviewed by major publications, including The New York Times, Time Out New York, The New Yorker, and The New York Sun. She currently lives and works in Springs, NY.

View more on the gallery’s website.

Virva Hinnemo Featured in the East Hampton Star

virvaMs. Hinnemo adopted cardboard as her primary material last summer. “I was ready to scale up, and I have a lot of cardboard boxes from when we moved here. It’s a surface I love to work on. Because of the imperfections, whether it’s print or folds or weird edges and creases, it almost has a kind of grit. And it provides organizing principles, such the grid it makes when it’s unfolded or the holes meant for carrying it.”

The cardboard she uses often contains images or words. For example, the first large-scale cardboard work, “Twin Thought,” from 2015, was painted on the flattened box in which her son John’s guitar was packaged, with “Gibson” and “fragile” and other words visible along with an image of a headstock and tuning keys.

Cardboard functions as both surface and object, asserting itself in ways canvas does not. “Canvas also has a formal aspect that bugs me a little. I like shows of artists’ doodles, there’s an intimacy when their guard is down, they just let loose. I think cardboard does that for me.”

She works with a big brush and has recently started using rollers. “House- painting tools enable me to cover more surface. I can use the roller more like a brush, sliding it over the surface. But I never make a decision in advance about what I’m going to use on a particular day.”

Her broad swaths of paint, while not thickly applied, have a blunt, material presence. Mr. Negroponte has astutely written about her work: “Her off-centered forms don’t dance; they trudge or traipse by you as in some social encounter. . . . Their quirks and bumps are never smoothed over; their scumbled surfaces allow the world to keep seeping in.”

View the full article on EastHamptonStar.com

Tips and Tricks for Traveling with Children

Summer is coming up on us in a few months..be prepared with these Tips and Tricks for Traveling with Children! Read British American Household Staffing’s latest blog post for some great advice:

http://bahs.com/news/detail/tips-and-tricks-for-traveling-with-children

Michael Kormos Photography offered these pro photo tips to creating your own fabulous infant photos

Michael Kormos Photography is a partner of British American Household Staffing and British American Baby Nurses and offers photo tips for newborns. Read British American Household Staffing’s latest blog post for some great tips:

http://bahs.com/news/detail/michael-kormos-photography-offered-these-pro-photo-tips-to-creating-your-ow