Press Release: “3 YOUNG ARTISTS”

 

“3 YOUNG ARTISTS”

SARAH JARRETT      ANNA LYLE     BAMOOZIE

 December 9 - December 30, 2020

            Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by SARAH JARRETT, ANNA LYLE and BAMOOZIE as part of Viridian’s Young Artist Program.  The show opens December 9th and continues through December 30th, 2020. There will be no opening reception due to the pandemic, but viewers are invited to come to the gallery Wednesday through Saturday 12-6PM, wearing masks. We ask that visitors make an appointment beforehand if possible, since only 5 visitors at a time will be permitted in the gallery. We will be closed Christmas Day & open ‘til 4pm on Christmas Eve.

            Sarah Jarrett is a figurative artist who uses old family photos, found photos, memories, and life experiences to create her work. Jarrett received her BFA in Painting from Lyme Academy Collage of Fine Arts in 2016. She has attended residencies at Chautauqua in upstate New York, Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy and GlogauAIR Artist Residencies in Berlin, Germany. Jarrett has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome in 2017 and 2018 for an Art and Philosophy Seminar. She received her M.F.A. from American University in Washington, D.C. in 2019. In addition to creating her paintings, Sarah is currently working fulltime with the homeless.

            Anna Lyle is a contemporary narrative artist from Birmingham, Alabama. She currently works full-time as a designer at an architecture firm located in downtown Birmingham, where she lives with her partner and cat. After receiving her Bachelor of Architecture from Mississippi State University, Anna moved back to Birmingham and pursue her career as an artist. Anna is mostly self-taught, working in oil paint as her medium. Her work has been exhibited in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, California, and New York.  More of her work can be found on Instagram (@annalyleart) and online at www.annalyle.com. "My body of work's purpose is to communicate the ideas and the myriad of emotions that come with feeling like one does not belong.  This chasm of belonging lends itself to an opportunity to create one.”

            A Native of Toledo Ohio, Bamoozie lived three years in the bay area of California, primarily in Oakland where he feels he was influenced to grow not only as an artist, but also as a person. Now residing in Brooklyn, he is focusing not only on his career as a painter and fine artist, but also as an actor in film.  Bamoozie feels he is constantly pulling inspiration from life itself and has developed a unique style of painting that includes imagery as well as words to express the beauty and the turmoil that he sees in the world around him. While specializing in acrylic and oil on canvas in his fine art, in his acting he focuses his empathetic skills on bringing to life the characters he portrays. Bamoozie feels he is forever growing through encouraging “out of the box thinking” in everyone with whom he works, both as a painter and an actor.

 

            Viridian’s Young Artist Program is a program designed to give young artists under the age of 35, a unique opportunity to show their art in Chelsea NYC. Each year, a fellowship is given to a Young Artist by one of the gallery’s senior artists to help them to grow in their professional skills. This year the fellowship was awarded to Bamoozie. We are pleased to share with you the paintings of these outstanding young artists and look forward to your reactions to their outstanding art.

 

Press Release: "Uncertainty"

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“UNCERTAINTY”
An Invitational Exhibit
November 18 - December 5, 2020

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Reneé Borkow * Bamoozie * Ellen Burnett * Henry Coupe *May DeViney * Bernice Faegenburg *
David Fitzgerald * Alan Gaynor * Wally Gilbert *
Chris Tucker Haggerty * Maki Hajikano *Kazuo Ishikawa * Kat King * Marco Lando * Anna Lyle * John Nieman *
Bruce Rosen * Barbara K. Schwartz * Susan Sills * Angela Smith *Robert Smith * Bob Tomlinson *
Frances Vye Wilson * Toto Takamori *
Marie- Ange Hoda Ackad *Jenny Belin * Katia Bulbenko *Arlene Finger * Joshua Greenberg *
Barbara Hillerman Lieske * Shawn Marshall * Vernita Nemec * Nancy Nicol * Sarah Riley * Meredeth Turshen * Orin Buck * Daniel Boyer * Silvia Boyer * Irene Christensen * Susan Darley * Bart Dluhy * Hisayuki Doi *Shingo Hayamizu * Ed Herman * Halona Hilbertz * Mika Isohata * Yasmine Iskander * K-Junko *
Gabriele Juvan * Miwako Kashiwagi* Angela M. LaMonte * Nancy Macina * Cynthia Mailman *
Megumi Matsukawa *Lynne Mayocole * Hiromi Minami *
Sai Morikawa * Ichigo Nohara * Len Rosenfeld *Sheila Smith * Helaine Soller * Hill Spriggins * Yvonne Skaggs * Susana Sulic *
K-KO * Sakiko Toyama * Sam Wiener *

Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present during these uncertain times, an invitational exhibit of artists exploring through their art the concept of Uncertainty, by its nature a difficult task. The exhibit will be both real & virtual and will open at the gallery premises November 18th and continue through December 5th, 2020.

Uncertainty by definition has to do with “a feeling or attitude that one does not know the truth, truthfulness, or trustworthiness of someone or something.” But the German physicist, Werner Heisenberg, in 1927 conceptualized “The Uncertainty Principle” as having to do with the limits of accuracy, “articulating the principle that the more precisely the position of a particle is known the less precisely is known its momentum and vice versa”.   

Ben Eastham, editor-in-chief of art-agenda and a founding editor of The White Review. writes in “The Case for Embracing Uncertainty in Art” and “On the Value of Bewilderment”. Here is some of what he has to say about embracing uncertainty in art: 

“Art today is less about the formal or aesthetic properties of an object than a way of talking about the intricately entangled, increasingly unstable world in which we live.”

“We should not be intimidated by uncertainty but embrace it.”

“Good art has always raised difficult questions, offended taste and challenged established categories.”

Eckhart Tolle who wrote “The Power of Now” states that “If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.” Tolle regards worrying about the future or regretting the past as time lost, and that instead we must live every minute as it occurs. Contemporary art, the art being made at this moment, is more concerned with dealing with ideas rather than with methods, materials or styles.  For artists, the making of art often serves as a substitute for worry.

For most of us living totally in the moment & not worrying is impossible.  In this exhibit, the making of art has perhaps provided ways that these artists are able to deal with the fears that are currently being created in our world by all the uncertainty currently confronting us.

 We  hope that  you the viewer will also derive some comfort from looking at and thinking about this art of “UNCERTAINTY” and that perhaps it will help you to deal with the uncertainty that we are always facing, but so much more during this time of the Covid virus, the growing concerns for our planet’s environment and racial injustice, to name just a few of the maladies of our times.

                                                                                                                        Vernita Nemec, 11/8/20

 

Gallery hours: Wednesday through Saturday 12–6pm & by appointment/ masks required
For further information please contact Vernita Nemec, Gallery Director at 212-414-4040 or viridianartistsinc@gmail.com

or view the gallery website: www.viridianartists.com

 

 

                                                                                                                        

Press Release: Maki Hajikano: “Relational Elements”

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Maki Hajikano
“Relational Elements”
October 21st – November 14th, 2020
 

Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present an exhibition of new work in glass by Maki Hajikano. The exhibition & installation is entitled “Relational Elements” and is the artists’s creative response to this moment in time. The show opens October 21st and continues through November 14th, 2020.  This is Maki Hajikano’s first solo exhibition with Viridian.

Maki Hajikano came to Viridian via the gallery’s annual Juried exhibit in 2018, selected by the New Museum curator, Joanna Burton. The work Burton selected was a circular installation of small droplets of rose-colored glass and the uniqueness of the work helped establish Hajikano as an outstanding Viridian Artist.

 The work in this exhibition has evolved out of the series “Ambiguous Borders”, which explored through color and juxtaposition, the obscureness of boundaries between different systems, social organizations and political institutions, serving as a metaphor for the boundaries enacted upon beings of color and other marginalized people. In her recent work, she investigates human cognition and visual illusion. By utilizing multiple materials such as glass, metal, and digital images, she creates richly layered environments in her installations.

 Hajikano has worked for the past 10 years using abstraction to create philosophical & politically inspired installations utilizing elements of glass, aluminum, and other materials which the artist has manipulated and composed into room-size compositions. “Relational Elements” is an inquiry into how discrete elements relate in such ways that the small units have a substantial existence and meaning in themselves, while at the same time are part of a larger system. Hajikano confesses to a fascination with such concepts that are “both fundamental at the molecular level, yet totally relevant to material existence itself and the phenomenological approach within which we navigate reality.” Hagikano uses these installations of abstract shapes to explore how our experiences affect our view of reality. This installation explores particularly the effect of the Covid-19 Lockdown on our society, as well as on our social, cultural, and personal lives.

 The artist states, “The COVID-19 pestilence altered our ‘social-beingness’; lockdown brought society abruptly to [a] consciousness of what was taken for granted: that we are a fragment of a larger ‘organism’, an element that does not function well without the existential being of society. This ‘lack’ also brought to attention our own existential crises and made many to question our individual place in the world. Many felt disconnected, due to physical separation; with time this was alleviated and overcome to an extent through technology. The parts of the human-networks (both intimate and societal) were able to reclaim their relational elements to reconstruct the larger entity of social-being.”

 Maki Hajikano received her MFA degree in sculpture from the University of Oregon and is currently an Associate Professor of Sculpture at York College in The City University of New York. She was awarded a residency program at the Pilchuck Glass School where she began using glass in a significant manner.  She has been the recipient of several residencies, foremost of which include the Bemis Contemporary Arts, and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center; she also received a Pollock–Krasner Foundation grant. She frequently exhibits her work in the U.S.A and Asia. 

 Sadly because of the Covid19 Lockdown, there will be no reception. The gallery will be open 12-6PM Wednesday through Saturday, but viewers are invited to make appointments to see the work and meet the artist. No more than 5 viewers will be admitted at a time, and masks are required to be worn by all.

 

 

 

Press Release: New Arts Prospect: Artists from Japan, Series VII, 2020" Curated by Sai Morikawa August 17- 23, 2020

                   

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                                New Arts Prospect: Artists from Japan, Series VII, 2020
Curated by Sai Morikawa

August 17- 23, 2020

=Featuring artists=

Ichigo Nohara * Miki Tatebe* Kiyokazu Ito
Miwako Kashiwagi * Monzo Watanabe * Morihiro Okamoto
Shingo Hayamizu * Yoshihiro Kogure *Yuko Sato
Sai Morikawa* Yuuki Kobayashi

 New York is a city where the top artists of the world have long coexisted, creating much diversity of art. The series “New Arts Prospect: Artists from Japan” is currently in its seventh year, having started in 2014.  Although only in its seventh year, the exhibition is already well established and attracts a lot of attention. Its purpose is to introduce popular Japanese artists who are well known and respected in Japan to new audiences in New York City.

The exhibition, held yearly in the summer, has been highly rated year after year since its inception. Its purpose is to attract art-loving New Yorkers who have a good eye for skillful work.  It will especially attract anyone who has an appreciation for the particular unique expressions behind the Japanese cultural background and it's delicate and elaborate techniques.  The artworks in the exhibition reveal a deep commitment and a high quality of artistry by their creators.

Sai Morikawa, the curator, says “every year, this exhibition has gained much interest and attention. Visitors don’t come to just look but carefully observe each and every artwork and select what they felt is the best work. The visitors’ deeper engagement with the art truly moved the event organizers. We are pleased that the unique artistic sensibility and technique of the Japanese artists was met with great support and praise from New Yorkers who were mesmerized by their artworks.”

This is the second year that the New Arts Prospect artists and curator are showing at Viridian Artists Gallery in Chelsea. Established in the late 1960’s, Viridian Artists has supported outstanding, “under-known” and emerging artists for more than 50 years. After having a highly successful exhibition last August at Viridian, the artists of New Arts Prospect were again invited to exhibit at the gallery to show their most recent outpourings of creative expression and visitors will not be disappointed.

This exhibition, curated by Sai Morikawa, aims to promote and nurture the cultural exchange between Japan and the US.  This exhibition will also be a significant milestone for the participating artists as they build their artistic careers. Regardless of their career stage, these ambitious artists will be showcasing an amazing lineup of art works through which they hope to send a strong message to the world. Despite the current situation, we look forward to your coming to the exhibition in person. All visitors are asked to wear masks and will be limited to only 5 people in the gallery at a time.

=Note=
The gallery exhibition will be open every day but Sunday from August 17th to 23rd from 12-6pm. Again,  Visitors must wear masks and there will be a limit of five 5 people at a time in the gallery.

The last day of the exhibition will open by advance appointment only- please call to the gallery for booking.

 

In Memoriam: Viridian Artist Deborah Sudran

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of longtime Viridian Artist, Deborah Sudran. Deborah was a gifted painter, fascinated with plants and nature. In the past, her paintings were collected by major corporations and institutions and she was preparing a new body of work to show next season. A gifted painter, Deborah used color to heighten the impact of her vision and photography to create the groundwork for her intensely vibrant portraits of plant life. Through her paintings she sought to communicate her emotional response to nature with compelling color and powerful imagery. She attended the Kansas Art Institute and the University of Michigan. In addition to exhibiting at Viridian, her work was shown in many museums and galleries including the Museum of the Hudson Highlands, the Westport Nature Center, the Aldrich Museum of contemporary Art, The Arsenal Gallery in NYC and was featured in the Art in Embassies program in Guyana, South America.

Please Click here to view more of Deborah Sudran’s work

Deborah Sudran "Orchids & Ferns" Oil painting, 50 x 36 inches.

Deborah Sudran
"Orchids & Ferns"
Oil painting, 50 x 36 inches.

Press Release: Apocalypse Now?”: Art created in moments that our lives were changed forever

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“Apocalypse Now?”

Art created in moments that our lives were changed forever

A virtual exhibit online

40% of art sales from this exhibit will be contributed to the Food Bank for New York City

The Corona Virus pandemic has upended our lives. We were already facing global climate change and increases in the number of nuclear weapons.  Now this virus, and others that may follow. Most of us who are fortunate enough to be artists don’t usually need to confront such realities. We survived 9/11 and Sandy. We have entered another one of those moments, but this time human life is threatened throughout the planet. It seems impossible to make art that will live up to the challenge & much won’t, but making art is a critical part of our survival. Making art is comfort both for the creator as is the sharing a form of comfort for the receiver, even if it doesn’t express or remove the terror. The comfort exists both in the making and in the seeing and sharing. We have no idea how life will be in the future but we know that it will be different. This moment in time has made us aware of the fragility of existence in a way that most of us been fortunate to not have experienced previously. But now we know that feeling & we seek to perhaps escape but we can’t, to perhaps understand but we cant do that either or perhaps, just to persevere- which we must. For many it has been impossible to create, for others, making art or attempting to, has been part of our survival. The art we are sharing in some cases is so personal & so raw and in others cases easy to look at, but we hope it will help you to sustain your trust in the future, however different it will be.  

                                                                                                                 Vernita Nemec                                                                                                                         April/ 2020

30 Under 30 Curatorial Statement from Kelly Kivland

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Curatorial Statement from Kelly Kivland

As juror for 2020 Viridian Artists Exhibition: 30 Under 30, I was inspired by the diverse depth of contemporary artistic creation in the United States at this moment. It is a rare opportunity to engage with artists from a vast range of areas around of the country, from Alabama to New York City and from Rhode Island to Saint Louis. Viridian Artists Exhibition: 30 Under 30 not only provides valuable insight into current points of view, it is also indicative of emerging movements in art. While the final selection was hard given the quality of the applicants, I was honored to select the thirty artists represented.

The artists in the exhibition come from diverse backgrounds, and the work chosen extends across many approaches and mediums. Much of the painting and photography in the exhibition is representational and rooted in personal narrative as well as social and political subtexts. Yassaira Torres’ photography captures pedestrian scenes that pointedly turn ubiquitous moments into considerations of pause, from strangers seated together at the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, to the shadow of a man posed against an outdoor storefront on West 4th Street in New York City. Bowen Walsh Ferrie’s photography seeks to upend stereotypes of typical ‘Americana’ representation, such as in her photograph of two young black men riding horses along a highway, spontaneously captured adjacent to an auto yard.

Raelis Vasquez’s paintings bring us into domestic environments to give attention to the lives of immigrants of color in the United States. Vasquez’s oil on canvas painting, Nexcy con Libros, is a portraiture of a young woman seated at table with one arm resting on, or more accurately protecting, a stack of books, her gaze locked with the viewer. Ashley Pelletier’s oil on canvas painting is a hauntingly abstract self-portraiture, a blurred figure with no face created through the artist’s layers of scraping and manipulation of her own depiction. Ming Ying Hong’s graphite on mylar drawings depict dueling forms of masculine and feminine body parts—a fractured mouth, forehead or eye— intertwined with serpentine and thread-like objects, which are intricately clustered against a white background as if hovering within an empty abyss. Andre Ramos-Woodard collage, "I don't want to think anymore, I just wanna sleep", 2019, features a small cutout of a black male in the fetal position that is placed in the upper right corner with the red text “guaranteed” taped above his floating body, giving attention to the societal neglect of black male vulnerability. Emily Elhoffer’s slightly grotesque sculpture questions our comfortability with the fat, flesh and organ-like elements of our own human form. Engaging with the language of craft, Elhoffer stuffs several synthetic tube-like forms beneath a latex casing to create a visceral intestine-like mass, evoking a psychological reaction to our underlying physical composition.

As an exhibition, the artists presented in Viridian Artists Exhibition: 30 Under 30 give us insight into the continued interests and contradictions of self, culture and the collective understanding of being in our contemporary world. Each are teasing out how art can be a catalyst for social and political prompts, while giving careful attention to the tension between the subjects of the images and the viewer as well as the greater concerns facing our sense of belonging and power in uncertain times.

 

Maki Hajikano is currently showing in two exhibits: PERIPHERAL and ABSTRACT MIND 2020

PERIPHERAL: An International Call for Works About Edges and Boundaries

January 23 – February 21

Manifest Gallery 2727 Woodbum Ave, Cincinnati, OH

Gallery Hours: Tues-Fri Noon-7pm   Sat noon-5pm

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Abstract Mind 2020: The 5th International Exhibition on Abstract Art

February 22 - March 1, 2020

CICA Museum, 196-30 Samdo-ro, Yangchon-eup, Gimpo-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea

Museum Hours: Wednesday-Sunday  10:30-5:30

John Nieman was recognized as one of the artists of the decade by Art Tour International on 1/16 2020! He also has two shows:

John Nieman

Group show:  What is missing?

Remember 20 years ago when young Eton Patz disappeared in Soho?  His face appeared on every milk carton in NYC.  This is a modern day interpretation of Missing, i.e. Missing American values.  Yes, they are milk cartons.  And they are missing.  

Venue: The Grand Palais Paris (the last show in this celebrated art galley for two years of restoration)

Dates:  Feb 11-16, 2020

Address:  Ask the concierge.

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Also see next:  “If you shoe fits…”

It instantly speaks to people

Venue:  Art fusion, St. Pete, Florida.

It’s like a shoe display of celebrities.  Original art.  

Duration:  through the end of February. 

Originally in Art Basel for 2 months.  Now in St. Pete. 

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Our director, Vernita Nemec was the juror for the exhibit "Doom & Bloom" at the West Windsor Art Center

This exhibition is up through February 28

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“ENDLESS JUNKMAIL SCROLL”: This piece by Vernita Nemec is part of “Doom and Bloom,” on view at the West Windsor Arts Center January 6 through February 28. The exhibition features the work of 25 artists using recycled and reused materials. An opening reception with the artists is Sunday, January 12 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Here is a link with more information:

http://www.towntopics.com/wordpress/2020/01/01/doom-and-bloom-at-west-windsor-arts-center/