Cross Contemporary Art

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Heather Hutchison: Here Now

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Heather Hutchison exhibits her latest work into the inquiry of light and transparency at Cross Contemporary Art, Saugerties, NY with an opening reception for the artist Sat Dec 6, 6-8pm. Utilizing bent Plexiglas, video installations or paint on transparent paper, Ms. Hutchison captures the flickering moments of natural light. Cindy Moore writes:  “Hutchison’s paintings are impossible to experience through reproductions. No matter how skilled the photographer, they cannot be captured in a fixed moment.  The work is responsive in a way alien to traditional painting: as the light shifts so does the hue.”  
Relocated from NYC to the Hudson Valley, Heather Hutchison has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants  (Pollock-Krasner, Gottleib Foundation),and her work is in many prestigious collections including the The Brooklyn Museum, Hammer Museum and the Smithsonian Institution. 
More information about the artist can be found:

Exhibition Essay, “boxed light bodies” by George Quasha http://bit.ly/hhcca4
video interview: http://bit.ly/hhutcca1
Artist’s website:  http://heatherhutchison.com

Sleepy Golden
Non-Specific Pacific
More Like the Sky on A Cloudy Day
Another Day
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Peggy Cyphers & Catherine Howe

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Peggy  Cyphers  and  Catherine  Howe:  Prints  and  Paintings

Cross Contemporary Art is please to present its first Two Person show of the prints and paintings of Peggy Cyphers and Catherine Howe curated by Ford Crull. Both of these New York City based painters have distinguished careers as fine artists and have received numerous awards and fellowships. Opening November 8th, this exhibit showcases the modern expressionist technique grounded in classical tradition of these artists and their individual gestural use of various materials such as sand, metal leaf,ink and oil paint on canvas. Both Cyphers and Howe are inspired by outside world and impassioned brush marks dominate their work. However, the similarities end there as Peggy Cyphers responds to the multi-dimensional experience of the landscape from various points of view (animal and human) and Catherine Howe looks to art history and its exuberant, fleshy subject matter as her starting point.
     In the Brooklyn Rail, Peggy Cyphers art is described by Jonathan Goodman:

“Peggy Cyphers’ painted characters and landscapes vibrate in dialogues of rhythm and repetition that influence sensory perception. Her surfaces recall color field, where abstract forms operate in a psychological dialogue of association – congestion and vast span, hyper-speed and recognizable icons. Cyphers’ painting is automatic writing – a stream of consciousness between geological, primordial and cultural time.”

G. Roger Denson writes about Catherine Howe‘s work:

“Howe especially lingers over exquisite portrayals of beautiful objects, both man-made and organic, envisioned by the Dutch and Flemish masters to convey the transience of life on earth. In this respect Howe disregards the severe and blunt vanitas paintings of skulls and decay in favor of over-ripe and peeled fruit, liquors languishing in food- and lipstick-smudged glassware, and the blooms of flowers showing the first signs of their demise to come.”
Exhibition curator, Ford Crull, has chosen these artists to show together because their personal, emotional engagement in painting is an inspiration to his own career as a painter.
“Both Peggy and Catherine represent what is exciting about gestural and expressionistic art making in the 21st century. They are painter’s painters. The way they both handle the brushstroke and  composition can only be achieved through painstaking time and effort, and continually willing to push the limits. They continue to redefine what can be, and exemplify the continued relevance of painting in our contemporary art forum.This first rate work by these two New York painters is truly art that matters. Its great to curate this two-person exhibit and bring it to a new gallery in the Hudson Valley region where we all derive so much inspiration for what we do.”
 
   Peggy Cyphers & Catherine Howe Two-Person show runs November 7th through December 1st. For more information, please contact Jen Dragon, Director, Cross Contemporary Art 81 Partition Street, Saugerties, NY 12477 845-399-9751

Richard Bosman by Eleanor Heartney

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Richard Bosman: Raw Cuts

Since he first emerged on the art scene in the early 1980s, Richard Bosman has been a master of what he terms the “ambiguous narrative”. In his early days, he was associated with the neo-expressionist movement, and gained attention and notoriety for loosely painted figural tableaux that often featured disturbing and violent scenarios – among them people drowning, brandishing weapons, and graphically perpetrating or suffering carnage. Though critics linked the works to an environment of crime and violence that surrounded New York’s East Village milieu which birthed neo expressionism, in fact, Bosman’s sources were comic books, Kung Fu and other forms of pop culture.

Today, the narratives in his works remain ambiguous, but they are quieter, and more freighted with psychological significance. While he continues to paint, he is also an accomplished printmaker. The works in this show reveal his facility with woodblock and linoleum relief. He notes that for him, painting is an additive process while printmaking is a reductive one, as he cuts away at the block to create his image. The result, as this series reveals, are simple, but potent images that encourage multiple readings. Still drawn to sources in popular culture, which he now gathers not only from films and comic books, but also from the internet, Bosman focuses here on closely cropped scenes full of foreboding, sexual tension, and unexplained anticipation. While there is no clear plot, viewers find themselves linking images to create any number of open-ended storylines. -Eleanor Heartney
Richard Bosman’s “Raw Cuts” a collection of woodcuts printed by the artist himself is on view at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties through Nov 3, 2014

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Ford Crull Solo Show

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Painter Ford Crull will have a solo show at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties, NY opening Friday August 29 with a reception for the artist Saturday August 30 from 4-8pm . Mr. Crull, whose work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery and the Brooklyn Museum, exhibits his latest paintings, encaustics and mixed-media drawings throughout the month of September. Included in this show is Ford Crull’s poignant encaustic series, White Rose, dedicated to the German student resistance movement against the Nazis during WWII. According to ArtNews critic Eleanor Heartney, Ford Crull’s paintings are “powerful, deeply felt” and convey a “genuine sense of mystery and wonder”. According to Mr. Crull “This mystery is where I find the real pleasure in painting. There is a beauty, simplicity and elegance in symbols, especially ones that are historically and culturally used over and over and often in different contexts with different meanings.”

Although based in New York City, Mr. Crull has long maintained a studio in Willow where many of the current artworks in the upcoming exhibit have been created. Gallery director Jen Dragon describes Mr. Crull’s exhibit at Cross Contemporary Art as an “important exhibition of a modern symbolist. Although internationally known and NYC-based, Ford Crull has always maintained a studio in the Hudson Valley and derives much of his creative energy from the quietude of the Catskills forests, mountains and streams.” Ford Crull’s solo show will be on view starting Friday August 29th and continues through September 29, 2014.

Adrian Frost

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Adrian Frost has been an artist-in-residence at 11 Cross Gallery and the character of this space took its cue from his energy and work.  In person, Adrian is a powerful, compassionate and  inspiring personality.  He creates an enviroment around himself  that demands participation: there is no such thing as a passive observer in Adrian’s world.  This participation can be by stepping over a pile of salt cushioning a block of driftwood, crouching around a tipped form to view the reverse side or recoiling from the jagged edges of broken glass.

An encounter with Adrian is always memorable as is any encounter with his art.  At first, one is struck by the “arte povera” qualities: chipped plexiglass, broken planks, plateglass “mended” by masking tape  but on closer examination everything is beautifully crafted, deliberate and secure.  The appearance of fragility is purely deceptive as the strength of the artist’s message emerges.

“those who know speak not…” by Adrian Frost upright view courtesty the Image Factory

In his paintings, Adrian combats space forging not so much letters but forms that individually embody the power of the entire word.  Painted phrases such as: “improvised explosive device” or “have a nice day” invoke a new meaning when the space of each painted character is fought for with a passionate brush. In his sculptures, Adrian  chisels cryptic poems into weathered wood.  A long bench states: “those who know speak not, those who speak, know not”  and the interiors of the hewn letters are painstakingly lined in sterling silver leaf.  The installation of this piece, like many others, will shift depending on context and enviroment.  Sometimes, Adrian has exhibited “those who know…” as an upright bench, other times it has been shown face down, barely legible save by looking at a mirror placed underneath and partially obscured by coarse rock salt.   This sculpture, installed as a functional bench, invites body contact yet another placement puts the work out of reach by making its meaning more obscure.  Other artwork can be buried in dirt, shielded behind broken glass or flipped to the wall (“One Man” 11crossgallery Saugerties, NY 13 August 2010), and yet in another incarnation  (“Another Circle” Emerson Resort, Mount Tremper NY 4 June 2010), the same work can manifest a table, exhibit handsome framing or be mounted like a ladder inviting ascension.
Adrian’s next show “Introducing Furies: The Erinyes, Cthonic Deites Supernatural Personifications of the Anger of the Dead” opens September 3, 2011 3-5pm at The Art Colony Eureka Springs , Arkansas.

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