The Unbearable Lightness of the Fantastical and Unwearable Art Show at The Terrarium Gallery at Drawing Rooms, 9/29/23 - 11/11/23

A Walk-Through of Constructed Identities in “The Unbearable Lightness of the Fantastical and Unwearable Art Show”
By Mona Brody
11/8/23

"The Unbearable Lightness of the Fantastical and Unwearable Art Show", curated by Anne Trauben, is showing in the Drawing Rooms Terrarium Gallery. The artists in this group exhibition have constructed identities in the form of installation, sculpture, photography, video, mixed media, drawing, painting, and sound. Trauben’s clear curatorial vision tells a broader story of archetypes, alter egos, historical referencing, and fantastical experiences for the viewer.

As I walked through the gallery, Marcel Duchamp’s alter ego, Mademoiselle Rrose Sélavy kept haunting me. Marcel Duchamp assumed the role of a seductive woman, displaying playfulness, fantasy, and the irony of Dadaism. His fellow artist and Dada collaborator, Man Ray, often photographed Duchamp’s adopted female persona dressed in a stylish 1920’s coat and hat.

Diamonds are a Queen's Best Friend by Christy E. O'Connor

A Dressing Room for Marie Antoinette, an installation by Christy E. O’Connor, achieved that transformative experience for me. The tiny white dressing room glowed in sparkling light, its scale suggestive of a child’s playhouse created an alternative world where Marie, in costume, danced to dream-like music in a video. I was transported into her fairytale of historical fiction and magic; I did not want to leave.

Changing Rooms by Bayard

Bayard, a multidisciplinary artist with a background in fashion design and costume, asks the participant to enter “Changing Rooms”, a 6’ x 9’ installation imbued with an abundance of multi-colored rags layered in this created space. The experience was reminiscent of an early 1900’s rag shop in the Lower East Side of New York. Was it a narrative of the people who might have given up tattered clothing for a fee? What was the real history behind the cloth?

Starlette by Poramit Thantapalit

Poramit Thantapalit’s figure appears with its outstretched wings, “a Phoenix” rising from the ashes. “Starlette” was created from recycled, corrugated cardboard composed of triangular cutouts,. uses staples to attach the triangular forms. This carefully assembled creature comes forward with a need for nature’s rebirth metaphorically and, literally, an imminent concern for sustainability.

Underpinnings #7 by Margery Amdur

Margery Amdur, a fiber artist, is a master at using the sewing machine. She has created a relief sculpture, “Underpinnings #7”, composed of vertical forms that are wrapped, stitched together, seemingly to protect. She brings to life through abstraction and repetition the need for human touch and support. I am reminded of a print by Henry Moore, “Tube Shelter, Perspective,”.This work was created during World War II in England; masses of people are huddled together sheltering from danger in an underground tunnel.

Are You Sure You Want to Be Mikey Mouse? by Miki Katagiri

Miki Katagiri, an expert milliner, using traditional hand craftsmanship to design, make, and trim, creates exquisite hats, but with a twist. Her hats are made from felt, fox fur, miniature toys, plants, and more; they cry out to protect nature, our environment, and pay attention to our universe. “Are You Sure You Want to Be Mikey Mouse?” is a satirical hat that has a toy meerkat sitting on fur, surrounded by Mickey Mouse ears, questioning life.

Caput by Kate Dodd

Kate Dodd’s imaginary headgear, “Caput”, is made from repurposed reference material. Keeping in mind its fragility, the work could easily be destroyed. The sculpture is meticulously assembled and painted with delicate colors resembling aged patinated metal. The materiality of the piece suggests vulnerability; curiously its structure suggests protection. The play of duality is what makes it compelling.

Lavatory Self-Portrait in the Flemish Style #7 (L) by Nina Katchadourian
Lavatory Self-Portrait in the Flemish Style #10 (R) by Nina Katchadourian

Nina Katchadourian, a photographer, videographer, and sound artist, takes witty self-portraits in which she portrays herself in a variety of ordinary settings. Utilitarian materials, such as toilet paper, which beautifully embellish the collar of her dress, and the mirror from the airplane’s bathroom are her immediate resources. These images are taken with her cell phone. “Lavatory Self-Portrait in the Flemish Style #10” is one such photograph. This fictionalized 17th century moody Dutch painting could have been a work created by Johannes Vermeer.

Braid Mask by gwen charles

gwen charles works in video, photography, sculpture, and performance. Like Nina Katchadourain, she uses her own body as an exploration of the female experience. Her photograph, “Braid Mask”, appears to emerge from a dream and historical referencing. Her evocative use of hair braids to cover parts of her face suggests fantasy and sexual promiscuity from a time gone by.

Mother by Donna Conklin King

The artist, Donna Conklin King, tells the story of a woman’s life lived. Her work on paper, “Mother”, begins with a worn shirtwaist dress from the 1970s. The dress is a matrix for a monoprint and mixed media; charcoal, an x-ray, and chalk pastel all beautifully drawn to express the portrayal of the fictional mother without arms or a face.

When an artist, with intention or not, creates an alter ego, what is the result? An artist may need distance from their artwork to provide clarity and a true understanding of the direction their art practice is taking. The artists in this exhibition designed a fictional framework as an essential part of their art, and when combined with its creator, the total proves to be a new and meaningful whole.

"The Unbearable Lightness of the Fantastical and Unwearable Art Show" will continue on view at Drawing Rooms Terrarium Gallery until November 11, 2023.

Mona Brody is an artist whose studio is at Manufacturers Village in East Orange, New Jersey. Learn more about Mona here.

Lucy Rovetto: For the Love of the Body at The Alcove Gallery at Drawing Rooms, 9/29/23 - 11/11/23

Lucy Rovetto’s Career-Long Exploration on the Human Anatomy’s Response to Emotional Stimuli at Drawing Room's Alcove Gallery
By: Lumane Luma
11/7/23

On view at Drawing Rooms Alcove gallery, Exhibitions Director Anne Trauben curates the career-survey "Lucy Rovetto: For the Love of the Body" with works spanning from 1989 - 2022. The separations of decades within the exhibition displays Rovetto’s psychological response to the zeitgeist. Years 1989 and 1990 feature photographs of intimate encounters with the body with compositions that show the beauty of its form. From 1994 - 1996 Rovetto’s sophisticated artistic exploration began to formulate. 

Cross-Eyed by Lucy Rovetto

In her 1994 “Cross-Eyed,” small photographs of repeated images of the nude artist laid forward are collaged in a sequence of rows. The image likeness appears as a coronary examination while the composition’s top center of the overexposed photographs are juxtaposed to appear as procedure lights seen above a patient before drifting to unconsciousness.

Squeeze with Words by Lucy Rovetto

In the 2010s, Rovetto’s medium focus on drawings evoked the encroaching claustrophobia of anxiety. 2014’s “Squeeze” and “Squeeze with Words'' appears as a progression of intrusive thoughts as both works are a rendition of a figure in a fetal position, though “Squeeze with Words'' is juxtaposed with illegible writing decreasing in scale to whispers as the ink goes from black to red. Also from 2014, “Facing Myself Right” is a large ink on wood outlined profile portrait of the artist that conveys Rovetto’s self-examination stripped to subtle details, a humbling confrontation of oneself to question what is the basis of identity.

Bound by Lucy Rovetto

For the new decade, Rovetto deters from a state of introspection, instead provoking the viewer with an unsettling scenario in "Bound", "Captured," and "Moth" which depict different perspective shots of an unidentified femme figure held restraint. The figure is sat in a chair, mouth bound with hands tied behind their backs. The viewer is a helpless observer behind the serrated screen of the grim scene. Drawn in comparison is the helplessness of observing through our devices, the chaos amidst the Covid-19 outbreak and socio-political upheaval in 2020.

Rovetto then symbolically details the gravity of emotions on the body with “Hanging Series.” Suspended from wire hangers, the works on paper appear like a play on the expression, “Hang to Dry,” which is likened to the feeling of being left to suffer alone. Of the three “Hanger Series,” Girls Got Guts (see postcard image above) is most intriguing, as it is a paper collage diagram of the viscera. It functions as an emotional signifier of our internal truth.

The dedication Rovetto has for exploring the human form has opened her horizon to utilize various forms of medium seamlessly. Each method serves its purpose for conceptual exploration from documentation in photography, psychological inspection with drawings and writing, to replicating visceral stimuli with textural 3-D materials. Rovetto’s works attune the presence of the body. The viewer is assigned the role as a test subject on nonverbal transmission. This is the basis of humanity.

"Lucy Rovetto: For the Love of the Body" will continue on view at the Drawing Rooms Alcove Gallery until November 11, 2023.

Lumane Luma is a curator and the founder of Luma Art Advisory. Learn more about Luma here.

Mona Brody: Portals, Apparitions and Other Voices, solo show at Watchung Arts Center, 9/16/23 - 10/22/23

by Bruce Halpin

Mona Brody’s show “Portals, Apparitions and Other Voices" at the Watchung Arts Center presents an effulgent excursion into the Sublime. I mean this particularly in a specific formal sense as well as the more commonly understood connotation: beautiful to the point of ineffability.The beauty of the paintings is what strikes the viewer immediately and emphatically. The other sense of sublime requires some explanation. 

In her seminal text on American painting of the Nineteenth Century: “Nature and Culture", Barbara Novack identifies two distinct aspects of the sublime, what she refers to as The Grand Opera and the Still Small Voice applied variously to artists such as Fredric Edwin Church and Fitz H Lane; Church obviously representing the grand opera and Lane, the still small voice. These two aspects of the sublime play back and forth throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and now into the 21st. Examples of the two might include Pollack, Rothko, on the one hand, and say, Agnes Martin or Forrest Bess on the other. Of particular significance is Bill Jensen whose early work, much influenced by Ryder, served as a jumping off point to his current painterly explorations. Mona Brody’s work is very much of the grand opera scheme, although the influence of nature in her paintings temper that. Edmund Burke, the 18th century revivalist of the sublime emphasized “Astonishment" and the transformative potential of the experience as being central to the sublime. Ms Brody’s paintings express that sentiment to the extreme. Her use of unconventional materials (shellac and raw pigments) implies a sensibility searching for extreme expression, as if mere paint and canvas could not alone supply the super charged effects she is seeking. The application of those materials also suggests a kind of “take it to the limit" feeling of these paintings. As Burke also suggested, beauty is not the proper vehicle for extreme and mysterious experience, a sense of transcendence is needed for the sublime to operate. 

Viewers seeking a profound experience, touching on mystery and imagination, owe it to themselves to see this show. 

Mona Brody: Portals, Apparitions and Other Voices, curated by Paul Pinkman, at Watchung Arts Center, 18 Sterling Road, Watchung, NJ, runs through October 22, 2023.

Bruce Halpin is an artist living in Jersey City. Read Bruce's bio here and view his artwork here.

Anne Trauben: Step Up on a Stool to Reach the Sky at Watchung Arts Center, 9/16/23 - 10/22/23

by Winifred McNeill
10/13/23

This one-person exhibition by Anne Trauben is an immersive experience into a magical world that is not to be missed. Trauben is a multidisciplinary artist who uses her ceramic practice as a centering device for a range of ambitious artworks. This installation brings together a multitude of materials that pay homage to the night sky and the beauty of the evening song.  

 

Hand-built porcelain forms conceal electrical junctions and enfold lights which hang, wires and all, from a floating framework. Looking up, and with the help of a small flashlight and step stool, one is rewarded by the discovery of monochromatic assemblages affixed to the ceiling.

 

Within the darkened room, participants become slowly aware of being surrounded by a large array of these small, delicate compositions. These highly organized designs are arranged in loose intervals across all the walls of the exhibit. Flat planes of fired porcelain shapes are intertwined with a variety of materials including embroidery hoops, glassine, vellum, and cardboard to become monochromatic constellations of delicate beauty.

Bird songs intermixed with softly spoken words encourage the viewer to look around the space of the exhibition to discover their source.  Within the space of the installation, one becomes aware of the gentle mystery of night.  

Anne Trauben: Step Up on a Stool to Reach the Sky, curated by Paul Pinkman, at Watchung Arts Center, 18 Sterling Road, Watchung, NJ, runs through October 22, 2023.

Winifred McNeill is an artist living in Jersey City. Read Winifred's bio here and view her artwork here.

NJ & Me: Imperfect Together, 5/25/23 - 7/29/23 at The Terrarium Gallery and The Alcove Gallery at Drawing Rooms

Imperfect Impressions: NJ and Me…
by Peter Delman
6/26/23

In the climactic final scene of Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans, the young aspiring filmmaker meets the cranky legend John Ford. Ford (played by David Lynch, of course) has only patience enough to share one piece of wisdom with the neophyte: “The horizon at the bottom of the frame is interesting. The horizon at the top of the frame is interesting. The horizon in the center is boring as shit!”

The artists in NJ and Me: Imperfect Together embrace this lesson, no doubt without coaching from a cantankerous maestro. There’s hardly a middling horizon in sight, and glorious skies and evocative foregrounds are the result. Tim Daly’s low horizons and big skies give his luminous clouds room to roam. In Tim Heins’ Dusk, Jersey City, bands of enigmatic color blaze like chevrons across a banner of sky.

In movies the high angle (horizon at the top) is used to express vulnerability. In Dorie Dahlberg’s stark beach scenes, Love Before COVID 2 and New Year’s Day. Will This Be the Year?, a few isolated figures brave the cold winter winds in a vast expanse of sand. In contrast, the sun shines bright in the beach paintings by John Meehan III and Sue Ellen Ley. In Meehan’s Safari Towel the looming Dad silhouette balanced by the crouching figure in shadow gives the painting an extra jolt of Baroque energy.

Lots of attention is paid here to New Jersey’s urban scene, though just about everyone wisely gives contemporary architecture a wide berth. Alan Ostrowski’s loving drawings of the Bayonne bridge sparkle. Kevin McCaffrey’s Hoodsin County is an understated send-up of historical maps. You need to pay close attention to catch all the playful humor in this and his other works. McCaffrey cites Finnegan’s Wake as a major influence on his process. His lodestar is Joycean stream of consciousness, and these images deliver unpredictable surprise—even to him. The plot thickens when he discusses his former life as a Dominican priest, and there’s the flawless rendering of the map itself, which even divine inspiration can’t account for.

Anne Trauben’s portraits of Jersey diners capture the full brilliance of their iconic neon signs. (Kudos to Trauben for curating this ambitious, intelligent exhibition.) Christopher Z. is also intrigued by signs, which flow across his drawings with the grace of water. James Pustorino’s Wildwood photographs celebrate the engineering of some of our most gonzo, loopy creative minds. It’s a pleasure to see this gem of pop culture still preserved and being enjoyed to the hilt.

In Photo Sculptura 2, Jean-Paul Picard uses a glass brick wall as a ready-made distortion filter. There are echoes of art history evident here—cubist fragmentation, surreal mystery, the grid. But in the end, thanks to the instant karma of the camera shutter, the image is an up-to-the- 
minute shining artifact of the present.

“Sign on the window says lonely” is my favorite opening lyric by Bob Dylan—an apt tag line for New Jersey, to judge by much of the work in this show. The few figures on Dahlberg’s beaches punctuate their bleak emptiness. Tim Daly’s highways are more deserted than in the first week of COVID lockdown. No one ventures out onto the spooky dollhouse streetscapes of Jessica Rohrer’s Precisionist paintings. Rohrer describes these immaculate streetscapes as “sanitized” and “disturbing,” and agrees that The Rapture might conceivably begin on her block. They are based on drone stills, which may have something to do with why they bring to mind films like Blue Velvet and The Truman Show.

Lauren H. Adams goes right for the heart of desolation. Her discarded couches are a lesson in how mute objects are capable of speaking to us with achingly poignant eloquence.

I went to college in Vermont. My freshman-year student dorm counselor was from Oklahoma. He was very impressed with lush Vermont, but took great delight in mocking New Jersey as “the armpit of the nation.” I didn’t know then that much of the Garden State is just as green as the Green Mountain State. As for Oklahoma, it’s presumably OK.

Forty percent of New Jersey is forested, and several artists here speak for the trees.  Doug Madill’s painting of Leonard Gordon Park captures, with expressively assured brush strokes, the golden light of a summer evening on urban trees. Edward Fausty’s exquisite photographs of woodlands are a moving testament to what we have and what we stand to lose—elegiac 
reliquaries for precious fragments of the true world. He describes his spherical images as evoking the experience astronauts have viewing the earth—"a living rock floating in the black void.”  Fausty knows what it is “to see the world in a grain of sand.” 

Viewing Eileen Ferara’s painting of the Hudson estuary, we imagine for a moment that the turbulent, unruly forces of nature have the power to hold at bay the “dark Satanic Mills” lurking in the background. I see Anne Percoco’s gentle installation Heap II as a riddle or koan: “when is a leaf not a leaf?” Is the pile of leaves, meticulously fashioned from paper street litter, a reproach, or something more ambivalent? So it goes in our imperfect New Jersey state of mind.

NJ & Me: Imperfect Together is curated by Anne Trauben.

Peter Delman is an artist living in Jersey City. Read Peter's bio here and view his artwork here.

Learn more about the exhibition and view images on Drawing Rooms website here.

Ani Rosskam and Bill Leech: A Wonderful World, 9/29/22 - 1/13/23, The Terrarium Gallery and The Alcove Gallery at Drawing Rooms

by Bruce Halpin

Ani Rosskam left and middle
Bill Leech right

Ani Rosskam and Bill Leech have provided a fascinating look into a world of serious whimsy; full of magic and humor, as well as viscerally impressive color. A substantial portion of the show is comprised of large scale works hugely ambitious and yet touchingly intimate and personal.  

Ani Rosskam’s work, while quite different from Leech’s work, compliments his ideas. The large  painting “Plop” is like an unlikely collision of color field painting and some sort of surrealism  that really defies any categorical attempt to be defined. Another large work, “Old Black Painting“, displays a sort of dream logic that disappears when you get too close to its meaning. In addition to the large works, Rosskam’s smaller works, mostly collage, invoke a similar undefinable unease combined with a sharp wit and undeniable humor. You are not going to be able to put a finger on what’s happening here. The work is disquieting, yet familiar, almost like an X-ray of a really complicated sensibility with which you mistakenly believe you’re familiar.  

Bill Leech’s large paintings employ an astonishing variety of painterly strategies that often seem to be at odds with each other but ultimately combine as a coherent statement. And it’s fun to see.  

Leech’s command of painting techniques brings an authoritative completeness to what otherwise might be just too disparate to coexist in a painting wherein the magic lies. Leech’s use of color is equally impressive. He has included some drawings and prints that further augment his vision and provide other avenues of wonder. There’s a private intuitive logic that makes it all work. 

When considering that these two artists live together, it’s hard to believe there’s enough room in any finite place for these huge imaginations. Sometimes it seems as if they are in a dialogue exchanging oblique messages about a shared universe. Of course each body of work stands on its own strength, but together they provide a powerful experience for the viewer and a glimpse into what is indeed a wonderful world.

Ani Rosskam and Bill Leech: A Wonderful World, curated by Anne Trauben, runs from 9/29/22 - 1/13/23.

Bruce Halpin is an artist living in Jersey City. Read Bruce's bio here and view his artwork here.