Cross Contemporary Art

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Work by Goertz, van Lent & Wood

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Trio:  Augustus  Goertz,  Marianne  van  Lent  &  Brian  Wood

Opening Reception Sat. March 5, 2016
on view thru March 27, 2016

“Trio: Augustus Goertz, Marianne van Lent and Brian Wood” is an exhibit of three artists’ abstract meditations of life and its many manifestations. From Brian Wood’s figural/vegetal forms to van Lent’s gestural landscapes and Goertz’ intense textural universes, there is an ambiguity of scale that slides from the cellular to the immense. Each artist contributes to a unique understanding of existence as an eternal shifting of energy from great to small, distant to intimate, fleeting and permanent. This seesawing back and forth in scale allows the viewer the distinct experience of multi-dimensional travel and the compression of simultaneous time.

“Trio: Augustus Goertz, Marianne van Lent and Brian Wood” is co-curated by Ford Crull and Jen Dragon. 

About the Artists:

Augustus Goertz: 
Augustus Goertz’s paintings involve a building of texture and pigment creating a hybrid sculptural surface.  This construction allows the nuances of changing light to participate in the experience of the artwork. The scale of his canvases shifts from aerial to terrestrial, from the vast sweep of a landscape to the miniaturization of a child’s toy. These paradoxical references give the viewer a distinct sensation of swinging from one reality to the next through an environment at once infinitely large and minute. More about the artist: http://bit.ly/ccagoertz

Marianne van Lent:
 Marianne van Lent captures the transcendence between the spiritual and material worlds. There may be suggestions of scale in her paintings with the inclusion of landscape references or biomorphic elements however she bypasses that reality by allowing indeterminate and mystical elements to float through, as if they were thoughts in the mind’s eye, intimate psychological states or the elusive space between worlds. More about the artist: http://bit.ly/ccamvlent

Brian Wood:
The paintings and drawings of Brian Wood create a powerful experience of organic forms in ambiguous scale. Colorful, biological shapes create their own luminosity in the darkness of the canvas or carve a precise, figurative contour from the whiteness of paper. It is not clear if we are encountering massive planetary movements, minute atomic reactions or intimate bodily sensations, nor is it meant to be. Mr. Wood, a Guggenheim Fellow, is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum among many other distinguished public and private collections. More about the artist:http://bit.ly/ccawood

Last Call ©Augustus Goertz 1997
Neverland © Marianne van Lent 2015
Phos ©Brian Wood 2015
Nod © Brian Wood 2012
Locks © Brian Wood 2015 oil on wood
Heartshorn © Brian Wood 2017 oil on canvas
End of the Line © Brian Wood 2017 oil on line

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Trialogue I: Paintings

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Trialogue  I :  Jackson  Dembar,  Ruth  Edwy  &  Suzanne  Rees

It can be argued that Abstract Painting is the most representational of all painting expressions because the subject matter is not a response to the outside world but literally the reality of paint itself. Jackson Dembar, Ruth Edwy and Suzanne Rees explore the dynamism and reality of paint in this group show: Trialogue I.

These area artists have long lived and worked in New York State and their commitment to painting has largely been outside mainstream art marketplaces. For decades, these three have been committed to the goal of painting for its own sake. The result is work that is about a pure and personal vision expressed in color, form and light. “Trialogue I” is co-curated by Alan Goolman and Jen Dragon.

About the Artists:

Jackson Dembar: Although he holds an MBA from Wharton, Jackson Dembar soon found that success in business paled in comparison to the experience of painting. Mr. Dembar’s decades as an artist covers an exhaustive range of materials united by a common theme of light, color, form, surface and passion. The painter says about his work: “I am the paint” and in essence, each painting is a self-portrait. He further writes: “Art is not about pleasing the potential buyer. It is about producing something new, communicative, vital, in that it can hit the viewer in the gut and allow them to see something they have never seen before. It is about going a step further in art history, showing understanding of life, the world around us, the times we live in.”

Ruth Edwy: Ruth Edwy (BFA, MFA Pratt) has been painting in her studio in the Catskills since 1972. Her atmospheric surfaces are often punctuated by geometric edges creating a spatial tension between what is permanent and impermanent. Ms. Edwy writes: “When I begin a painting, I don’t always have a particular idea or emotion that I want to express. Rather, I have the need to paint, per se, and from the act itself–the physical gesture, the movement of the brush on the canvas, the color and shape and line that begin to come from my hand and body–the painting begins to emerge as a coherent entity.”

Suzanne Rees: Suzanne Rees (BFA Parsons, MFA Maryland Institute College of Art) approaches painting as a sculptor in that the illusion of material space is her starting point. Allowing the marks to determine the forms, each painting becomes a study of density and atmosphere, of weight and balance. Ms. Rees says: “I like to keep my work on the edge of representation with regards to space, as well as image. Light is the element that punctuates the work for me. From flat space I like to see moments of dimension materialize. They feel hyper-real. I’m looking for the quality of a dream in which objects, space and people are infused with an emotional meaning, amplified beyond what is experienced in everyday life.”

“Trialogue I: Paintings by Jackson Dembar, Ruth Edwy & Suzanne Rees” opens Februry 6 and continues through February 28th, 2016

untitled Jackson Dembar 2015
september green ©ruth edwy
untitled ©Suzanne Rees 2015
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FOUR FORCES

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Mike Cockrill
In Retrospect

The War Between the States: The Confederacy vs. Arnold Palmer © Mike Cockrill 2016

Opening Reception Sat. May 6th
Cross Contemporary Art
99 Partition St. Saugerties, New York 12477
on view thru May.28, 2017

GALLERY HOURS: Thurs- Mon 12-5pm

Cross Contemporary Art inaugurates its new 1,000-square-foot space at 99 Partition Street, Saugerties, NY, with a survey of paintings, works on paper and iron sculpture by Mike Cockrill.
            The exhibition will include over 40 drawings that trace the artist’s evolution over the past 20 years from his gun-wielding clown-killer girls of the ‘90s to his recent modernist drawings and collages of fragmented female figures.
            One of the most frequent themes of Cockrill’s drawings is the relationship between artists and their subjects; they are explorations of the moments of creation. In several drawings, girls stand at easels and draw clowns while in other drawings the girls themselves become the studio models for clowns and as well as baboons and chimpanzees who sit at easels with poised brushes studying their human subjects. His large new painting, “New Mom,” (2014), continues this theme in a monumental scale.
            Cockrill’s never-before-seen sculptures, “Iron Men,” relate to his Existential Man series of paintings; cast in iron from styrofoam constructions and given a rich patina, Cockrill’s sculptures seem to rise and crumble at the same time.
            Blending both the playful and the serious, Cockrill’s challenging art continues to foster compelling conversations about social values and artistic expression.
            Mike Cockrill has had over 20 solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally. His paintings were included in the 2016 Outlaw Bible of American Art, published by Last Gasp.

MIKE COCKRILL: In Retrospect opens with a reception for the artist on Saturday, May 6, 5-8pm and runs through May 28, 2017.
New Mom © Mike Cockrill 2014 oil on canvas
Artist and Model (Monkey Shoes) © Mike Cockrill graphite, ink, charcoal on paper
Iron Men © Mike Cockrill 2016 cast iron, wire, patina
Blue-Eyed Lady © Mike Cockrill 2017 mixed media on paper

Shira Toren “Eternal Return”

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Shira Toren “Eternal Return”

Shira Toren’s solo show “Eternal Return” is an exhibit of abstract paintings and drawings that refer to vast patterns and dimensional space.  Painted on plaster substrates applied to canvas, these luminous images serve as a spiritual template for the real world. Ms. Toren uses the velocity of twining, travelling or precipitating marks to create universes that are at once vast and minute. The same way many cells make up a living organism, stars create the constellations and human populations collectively make history, Shira Toren’s artwork refers to the endless consolidation of the many into the one.

Shira Toren “Eternal Return” is on view from November 28th- December 27th with a reception for the artist on Sat. Dec 5, 6-8pm

About Shira Toren:  Shira Toren is an American-Israeli artist with a long history working with textures and forms. Born in Tel-Aviv, she moved to New York City to study fine art and design receiving her BFA from the Pratt Institute and an Associate Degree in Art Therapy from The New School. Ms. Toren has also studied at The Art Students League as well as IS183 School of Art in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Shira Toren is a recipient of The Henry Matisse Estate Scholarship and attended the New York Foundation for the Arts Bootcamp in 2011. Ms. Toren maintains studios in New York City and Great Barrington, Ma.

More about Shira Toren:
Artist’s website: http://www.shiratoren.com
New York Times mention: http://bit.ly/ccastnyt

Iain Machell “Platte Clove Lens”

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Iain  Machell  “Platte  Clove  Lens”

     Iain Machell is committed to form and meaning. Sometimes these forms make words that play with concept and context. Sometimes they manifest themselves as blurred digital images seizing motion at the expense of clarity. And sometimes abstract form is explored in an intricate 16th century engraved style of ink laboriously crosshatched on paper. The most recent explorations comprise the exhibit “Platte Clove Lens” and are a result of a July residency in 2015 at Platte Clove, in the Catskill Mountains. Emerging from the tradition of landscape art that romanticizes nature, Machell instead focuses on the “dark, twisted, dangerous and angry power” nature has over humans, and the troubled relationship humans have with nature. The dark woods and blurred streams that infuse Machell’s multiple studies hint of the mystery of deep, burrowing spaces and the sharp, fleeting nature of light. Iain Machell writes about “Platte Clove Lens” that it is “A visual reaction to the idyllic, romanticized landscape paintings of the Hudson River School. Platte Clove was a favourite location  of these artists  and I chose it deliberately to rattle their cages.”  By invoking the past, Machell propels the landscape concept forward into the 21st century.
“Platte Clove Lens” opens October 31st and continues through November 22nd.

About Iain Machell: 
     Originally from Scotland, Iain Machell studied at Grays School of Art and received his MFA from SUNY Albany.  A  well-respected visual artist and teacher, Mr. Machell was awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and is currently a Professor of Studio Arts and holds the position of Chair of Art, Design, Fashion, Music, Theatre and Communication Department at SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge NY.  Mr. Machell has been a visiting artist and lecturer at numerous colleges and universities including Bennington College, Parsons School of Art, University of Massachusetts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ball State University, SUNY at Albany, West Virginia University and Montserrat College of Art. Iain Machell was also the recipient of a NYSCA stipend and was a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Finalist (Sculpture). Iain Machell’s drawings, book projects, paintings and sculptures  have been shown in galleries and institutions throughout the United States and United Kingdom notably The Drawing Center, The Sculpure Center and the Center for Book Arts in New York City and a handmade book is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art/Franklin Furnace/Artist Book Collection.

More information about Iain Machell can be found:

Artist’s website:  http://www.iainmachell.com

New York Times Art Review: http://bit.ly/ccaimnyt

Chronogram Magazine: http://bit.ly/ccaimchron

Mark Thomas Kanter “Creation Myths”

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Mark Thomas Kanter “Creation Myths”

Mark Thomas Kanter’s solo show “Creation Myths” opens with an Artist’s Reception on Saturday, October 3, 6-8pm at Cross Contemporary Art, Saugerties, NY.

        Mark Thomas Kanter’s ambitious oil paintings and ink drawings reference the whole of art history culminating in a 21st century expression of ancient themes. Emerging like the flickering forms from Plato’s cave, Kanter’s work meditates on the tonal variations of the Renaissance, the spacial solidity of Classical Art, the gestural brushwork of Expressionism and melds these traditions in the crucible of the planar manipulations of Modern Art. By invoking the continuum of Art’s history, Kanter reaches for heroic themes that underly all human experience and manifests itself in Myth. However this progress through time and these tales that explain phenomenon are not the goal of Mark Kanter’s painting. Instead it is his painting process that reveals an image which is neither abstract nor figurative. Kanter calls his paintings “configurations” as he weaves historic visual traditions with contemporary improvisational discoveries into a symphony of space and time.
“Creation Myths” opens October 3rd and continues through October 25th.

About Mark Thomas Kanter: 
A recipient of a Helena Rubinstein Foundation grant and a participant in the New York Foundation for the Arts Mark project, Mark Thomas Kanter is well respected as an American painter and instructor. Mr. Kanter has taught in Italy at the International School of Art in Umbria and in the United States at Columbia University, Parson’s School of Design, S.U.N.Y. New Paltz, Purchase College, and American University. He has also been a visiting artist at Dartmouth College, Illinois State University and NYC’s “Studio in a School” program. In 2010, Mr. Kanter curated the exhibit “North of New York: The New York School Generation in the The Hudson Valley Region” for the Kleinert-James Art Center in Woodstock, NY. Mark Thomas Kanter maintains a studio and home in Woodstock together with his wife, artist Heather Hutchison and their son, Dante.

More information about Mark Thomas Kanter: 

Artist’s website:  http://markthomaskanter.com
Roll Magazine Interview (together with Heather Hutchison):http://bit.ly/ccamkrm
Hudson Valley Times Review: http://bit.ly/ccamkhvt

Conversation: Katherine Bowling & Suzannah Lessard

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Conversation Between Katherine Bowling & Suzannah Lessard

On Saturday Sept. 26th at 7pm, writer Suzannah Lessard speaks with Katherine Bowling on the union of memory and the landscape in Ms. Bowling’s current show “The Presence of Leaves” at Cross Contemporary Art. Katherine Bowling’s passion for contemplative landscape spaces has long been an essential trait of her paintings and prints. Inspired by the woodlands of the Hudson Valley and Catskills region, Ms. Bowling’s recent artwork captures the luminosity of golden dappled forests and the quiet shadows of moonlit nights. Writer Suzannah Lessard will steer a lively conversation with the artist about her intentions and techniques and the symbolism of the landscape in Ms. Bowling’s artwork.
About Katherine Bowling’s Solo Show “The Presence of Leaves”
Katherine Bowling’s imagery uses the landscape to create intimate spaces. Inspired by the environment of upstate New York, her woodlands are illuminated by dappled light sparkling through a leafy ceiling. Often Ms. Bowling’s paintings compel the viewer to enter this shimmering forest realm down a pathway away from civilization. Other images introduce the contrast between the decay of manmade structures and the grand, renewable cycle of the surrounding trees. And like Albert Pinkham Ryder before her, Katherine Bowling sometimes boldly paints a portrait of the moon with a silvery light that is in elegant contrast to the habitual golds of her sunlit forests. Although Ms. Bowling’s paintings and prints are in the tradition of the Hudson River School, her expressive technique, quiet symbolism and masterful spatial illusions take the idea of landscape painting into the 21st century. Katherine Bowling’s “The Presence of Leaves” closes Sunday, September 26th.
About Katherine Bowling:
Since her emergence in 1980s, Katherine Bowling has been well respected as an American painter and printmaker. Ms. Bowling has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship. Her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum and the Fisher Landau Center in New York City, the Orlando Museum of Contemporary Art and the Norton Museum of Art in Florida as well as the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art in Evanston, Illinois and St. John’s University in Santa Fe, New Mexico

More information about the artist can be found:
Artist’s website:  http://katherinebowling.com/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Bowling
NYTimes Art Review: http://bit.ly/ccakbnyt
About Suzannah Lessard:
Suzannah Lessard is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family (1996). Ms. Lessard has taught at Columbia School of the Arts, Wesleyan University, The New School, George Mason University, George Washington University, and Goucher College MFA in Creative Non-fiction.  She was one of the first editors of the Washington Monthly and a staff writer at The New Yorker Magazine. She has also published in New York Times Magazine, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, Wilson Quarterly and Harvard Design. Suzannah Lessard is the recipient of the Whiting Award and the Mark Lynton History Prize as well as a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Jenny McKean Moore Fellowship at George Washington University. Her latest book, T”he View From a Small Mountain: Reading the American Landscape in the Twenty-First Century” is scheduled to be published in 2016.

Katherine Bowling: The Presence of Leaves

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Katherine Bowling: The Presence of Leaves

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 Katherine Bowling’s imagery uses the landscape to create intimate spaces. Inspired by the environment of upstate New York, her woodlands are illuminated by dappled light sparkling through a leafy ceiling. Often Ms. Bowling’s paintings compel the viewer to enter this shimmering forest realm down a pathway away from civilization. Other images introduce the contrast between the decay of manmade structures and the grand, renewable cycle of the surrounding trees. And like Albert Pinkham Ryder before her, Katherine Bowling sometimes boldly paints a portrait of the moon with a silvery light that is in elegant contrast to the habitual golds of her sunlit forests. Although Ms. Bowling’s paintings and prints are in the tradition of the Hudson River School, her expressive technique, quiet symbolism and masterful spatial illusions take the idea of landscape painting into the 21st century.
About Katherine Bowling:
Since her emergence in 1980s, Katherine Bowling has been well respected as an American painter and printmaker. Ms. Bowling has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship. Her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum and the Fisher Landau Center in New York City, the Orlando Museum of Contemporary Art and the Norton Museum of Art in Florida as well as the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art in Evanston, Illinois and St. John’s University in Santa Fe, New MexicoMore information about the artist can be found:
Artist’s website:  http://katherinebowling.com/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Bowling
NYTimes Art Review: http://bit.ly/ccakbnyt
Almanac Weekly: http://bit.ly/ccakbaw

Susan Copich “Domestic Bliss”

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Susan Copich “Domestic Bliss”

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Since Susan Copich’s first exhibit of “Domestic Bliss” in 2014 (Umbrella Gallery, NYC), her photographs rapidly travelled over the internet generating tremendous response. Images from the exhibit flashed across countless computer screens worldwide. The elegant scenes depicting suburban privilege are at first glance banalities often found in lifestyle magazines. Like advertisements for an ideal life, the photographic quality and composition mimics a marketing illusion. However, the carefully composed veneer is part of Copich’s message: a fur coat, a swimming pool, an elegant dining room with picture windows, a dream kitchen are all a staged set prepared for actors posed in a “tableau vivant”. But the challenging gaze of the photograph’s female protagonist demands closer examination revealing darker ironies: the pain of parenting, the cruelty of intimacy, the ache of ambivalence, the recklessness of desire, and ultimately the loss of illusion. To engage with these photographs in a gallery, and not through the Internet, is the best way to understand the irony of Ms. Copich’s storytelling. “Domestic Bliss” is a mirage as the moment is imagined while the story-line continues to roll past the stills. The pretty blonde woman staring out at the viewer, is the only moral compass that is constant throughout the photo series. She challenges us to experience the discomfort of the tableau and dares us to recoil from the scene. She presents the taboos of our society and acts as the silent narrator of a morality play frozen by the camera’s eye. The over arching lie of Susan Copich’s “Domestic Bliss” tells a harsh truth by peeling back the veneer of civilization to reveal the danger of denial.
Susan Copich writes about her work: “I dwell in the dark thoughts and recesses of my mind to create character and subject…(and) navigate both my own personal imperatives as woman, artist, mother and wife, as well as those – personal, social, and cultural -that are imposed by
others. My work is my commentary on how a family can live a public life that is far from their private life, even within the family; how secrets are kept, coddled and nurtured”

About Susan Copich:

Since graduating Ohio State University (BFA, 1991), Susan Copich has had professional careers as a modern dancer, teacher and actress. Looking to explore new forms of art and self-expression, Copich returned to academia at New York City’s International Center of Photography. While at ICP, Ms.Copich began laying the mental framework for what would become her photographic series “Domestic Bliss”.The series gives voice to Copich’s inner “darkness” while examining family life in a humorous context. Like many celebrated contemporary artists, Copich’s art rarely inspires a moderate response. Copich’s journey to explore universal truths are celebrated by some and shunned by others. Susan Copich lives in Upstate, NY where she resides with her husband and two daughters.
More information about the artist can be found:
Artist’s website: http://susancopich.com
Media reviews/Interviews (selected):
Daily Mail: http://bit.ly/ccascop1
Slate: http://bit.ly/ccascop2
BoredPanda.com: http//bit.ly/ccascop3
Huffington Post: http://bit.ly/ccascop4
Bust.com: http://bit.ly/ccascop6
Beautiful Decay: http://bit.ly/ccascop7

CATHERINE HOWE SOLO SHOW

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Catherine  Howe

Supreme  Fiction:  Monotypes  &  Mylar  Paintings 

Solo  Exhibition  July  3  –  26,  2015

Supreme Fiction: Monotypes and Mylar Paintings by Catherine Howe opens with an Artist’s Reception July 35-8pm at Cross Contemporary Art, Saugerties and runs through July 27th, 2015. Inspired by the luscious paintings of the Baroque era, Catherine Howe’s riotous compositions bring still lifes and botanicals into the 21st century. Her exuberantly expressive brushwork  and attention to surface create vibrant works out of uniquely contemporary materials such as carborundum grit and polyester. The luminous results resist being categorized as solely, drawings, paintings, or prints. David Ebony writes “Howe’s still lifes…are anything but still. The images seem to be imploding or exploding, in a constant state of flux.” Michele C. Cone says about Ms. Howe: “Howe’s evocative paintings are not about still life per se, but about the naming of things transposed into paint, and the magical interaction between medium, memory and perception.”Supreme Fiction: Monotypes & Mylar Paintings by Catherine Howe” opens July 3-26.
About Catherine Howe: Catherine Howe received an MFA from SUNY Buffalo in 1983. She has been reviewed in many publications including Art in America, Artforum, Art Critical, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times. For over twenty years, Ms.Howe has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe  including shows at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, MoMA PS 1 in New York, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. Catherine Howe is on the faculty of the New York Academy of Art in New York City.More information about the artist can be found: 
Artist’s website:  http://catherinehoweartist.com
Video interview: http://bit.ly/ccachow1