Cross Contemporary Art

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Peggy Cyphers: Solo Show

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Peggy  Cyphers:  Prints  and  Paintings

 

Peggy Cyphers solo exhibition of paintings and prints opens Sat, June 6th at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties, NY.   The art of Peggy Cyphers responds to the multi-dimensional experience of the landscape from the various viewpoints of living beings. Gazing skyward from the bottom of a cavern like a fox or towards the horizon in a ruffle of woodpecker feathers, Ms. Cyphers re-imagines the world through different animal consciousnesses, defying both perspective and gravity. For her show at Cross Contemporary Art, Peggy Cyphers introduces a series of cyanotypes (prints created by sunlight) using rare botanical prairie grass samples and mysterious equine imagery whose reverse shadows are suspended in a sky-blue ground.

    In the Brooklyn Rail, Jonathan Goodman writes about Ms. Cyphers: ” Cyphers makes it clear that she has opted for a double awareness, in which non-objective insight vies with close scrutiny of the natural world.” New York Times’ Roberta Smith notes that Cyphers paints “in an effortless style that corrupts and complicates the staining technique originated by Color Field painters like Helen Frankenthaler with various ideas in the air: notational, pattern-prone motifs, landscape references and allusions to textiles and fabric.” Cross Contemporary Art gallery director, Jen Dragon notes that “throughout Ms. Cyphers long and distinguished career, her overarching aesthetic concern has always been the interconnectedness of all beings to the earth and to each other”

About Peggy Cyphers:       Peggy Cyphers’ work can be found in many important museum,university and public collections throughout the world including National Gallery, Washington, D.C.Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. National Museum of Women in the Arts,Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Wash. and the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, Iowa to name but a few. She is a recipient of many Grants include National Endowment for the Arts, Peter S. Reed Foundation, The Elizabeth Foundation, National Studio Award PS.1. Residency awards include Yaddo, Art Omi, Tong Xian Art Beijing, Santa Fe Art Institute, ISCP, Triangle & Clocktower/P.S.1. Currently, Peggy Cyphers is a tenured adjunct professor of visual arts at Pratt Institute. More information about the artist can be found: 
Artist’s website:  http://peggycyphers.com
Video interview: https://vimeo.com/86328765
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Cyphers

Portia Munson Solo Show

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Portia  Munson  “Little  Suns,  Hollow  Bones”

 

Portia Munson‘s solo show, “Little Suns, Hollow Bones”, transforms Cross Contemporary Art into a world of flowers, plants, bones and creatures. From brilliant dandelion wallpaper on the walls to magical mandala prints of blossoms and small animal corpses, this exhibition addresses the artist’s interest in environmental issues while infusing the gallery with the spirit of spring.
     Although a conceptual extension of her 2013 “Reflecting Pool” exhibit at PPOW Gallery in New York City, Portia Munson’s upcoming “Little Suns, Hollow Bones” presents some new imagery derived from the flora and fauna of the Catskills and Hudson Valley region. Munson’s digital scanning of her subjects is a meditative exercise in organizing the chaos of nature as its elements are caught at a moment in time. Choosing flowers that bloom that day in her garden, Munson creates intricate patterns of color and form that, according to Claire Lambe in Roll magazine, “although preserved through the magic of digital technology, are as ephemeral as sand paintings,” and as a reviewer for The New Yorker stated,“(have) a seductive luminosity; each floral element appears to emit light.”
More information about Portia Munson can be found:
Artist’s website: http://portiamunson.com
New York Times Article about Portia Munson: http://bit.ly/pmccanyt
Portia Munson’s recent Public Arts Project for MTA Arts and Design: http://bit.ly/pmcca01
Portia Munson Review in Roll Online: http://bit.ly/pmcca02

About Portia Munson: Portia Munson is a visual artist who works in a variety of media including installation, painting, photography & sculpture. Solo shows include exhibitions at PPOW Gallery, Yoshii Gallery and White Columns in NYC, among others. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US, Canada & Europe in such venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland; the Kunstahallen Brandts Klaedefabrik, Odense, Denmark; and in NYC at the New Museum, Ace Gallery, Exit Art, DC Moore Gallery and Affirmation Arts. Ms. Munson has taught at NYU, Yale School of Art, Vassar Collage and SUNY Purchase. She holds a BFA from Cooper Union and a MFA from Rutgers. Portia Munson has received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, Skowhegan, Fine Arts Work Center Provincetown, Art Omi, and others. Her work has been reviewed and written about in many publications including The New York Times, Art in America, Newsweek, Harper’s, USA Today, The New Yorker, Flash Art and Artforum.

Portia Munson “Little Suns, Hollow Bones” Solo Exhibition 
May 9-31, 2015
Artist Reception Saturday, May 9, 6-8pm
at Cross Contemporary Art, Saugerties, NY

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Gregory Amenoff: Selected Prints

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Gregory  Amenoff:  Selected  Prints  1983-2013

     “Gregory Amenoff: Selected Prints 1983-2013” is the first solo exhibition of woodcuts, lithographs, intaglio and monoprints in this artist’s distinguished career. The show opens with an Artist’s Reception Sat, April 11, 6-8pm at Cross Contemporary Art, Saugerties, NY.  Known primarily as a painter, Mr. Amenoff has also had a long career as a printmaker. This survey traces Mr. Amenoff’s first forays into large format color block woodcut through to his later painterly monoprints, aquatints and lithographs. Whether its painting, prints or drawings, Gregory Amenoff works in the tradition of the great American nature painters using the landscape as the inspiration for his abstract imagery. According to Rachel Rosenfield Lafo,  “Gregory Amenoff responds intuitively to stimuli in the natural world of landscape and atmosphere and the inner worlds of emotion and spirit, blending his perceptions into organically abstract images. In his work the outer world is internalized; the inner world is manifested in visible form.” For those who have followed Gregory Amenoff’s career as a painter, this exhibit will present his changes and discoveries as an artist and the influences these discoveries have had on his painting. For those new to Mr. Amenoff’s work, this show will be an exciting introduction to a great 21st century American artist.

 

About Gregory Amenoff: Gregory Amenoff’s work can be found in many important museum and public collections throughout the world including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Modern Museum of Art (MoMA), The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Art Institute Of Chicago and The Brooklyn Museum, to name but a few. Mr. Amenoff is a multiple recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Award in Painting, American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award and in 2011, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow. Gregory Amenoff holds the Eve and Herman Gelman chair of Visual Arts at Columbia University and received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art.  Mr. Amenoff works and lives in New York City and Ulster County, New York.

Garry Nichols “Water Witch”

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Garry  Nichols:  Water  Witch

 

Garry Nichols solo exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculpture opens Sat, March 7 at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties, NY. Mr. Nichols is a prolific artist who plays with the paradox of space: what should be big is very small and what should be small, is enormous creating a fantastic distortion that torques pictorial space. The feeling of far-off lands, of maybe even the most far-off land of Nichol’s native Tasmania lends his art a sense of adventure and discovery of a new state of nature.
Garry Nichols takes over the gallery and transforms the space into an enviroment of nautical and botanical fantasy reflecting his far-ranging fascination with water divining, sailing ships, tropical plantlife and aboriginal art. Adrian Frost writes: “Nichols is now in his stride. Ultimately an epic painter, a man of the long vision, the big picture, he is intimate with painterly detail yet always pushing for the grand yet haunting vision”. Cross Contemporary Art director Jen Dragon says of Garry Nichols “Mr. Nichols is a wordless storyteller whose art follows the flow of form much as the divining rod discovers the unseen stream of subterranean water. Its exciting to surrender the gallery for an installation of such breadth and ambition!” In an interview with Guy Trebay for the NYTimes, Garry Nichols say of his own work “I have no plan when I go into the studio, I just let the drawings flow.” Just like the divining rod also known as the water-witch.

About Garry Nichols:
Garry Nichols, work can be found in many museum and public collections throughout the world including Samuel P. Harn Museum University of Florida, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria, Burnie Museum, University of Newcastle Australia,Osaka Hilton Hotels, Westpac Bank, ARTBank. A recipient of New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and Gottlieb Foundation Awards, the artist has shown at numerous institutions including The Brooklyn Museum, Marymount Manhattan and Kean University. Most recently, Mr. Nichols’ paintings were published in “I Don’t Poem” an anthology of poetry and art edited by Claudia La Rocco. Garry Nichols currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Garry Nichols currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
More information about the artist can be found:
Video interview: http://vimeo.com/79713584
Artist’s website: http://garrynichols.com

About Cross Contemporary Art: Cross Contemporary Art is a gallery dedicated to showing mid-career and established artists who have a connection to New York City, Hudson Valley and Catskills region. Open Thurs through Mon 12-6, Tues and Wed by appointment or chance. 81 Partition st Saugerties, NY 12477 Phone Gallery Director Jen Dragon 845.399.9751 for more information

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“Take 5” Group Show of 5 NY Artists

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Take  5:  Group  Show  of  Five  New  York  Artists

“Take 5”, at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties, NY, opens Sat, Feb 7, 6-8pm and runs through Sunday, March 1.

This group show presents paintings, drawings and sculpture by five New York artists: John Berens, Jeffrey Bishop, Mike Cockrill, Jared Deery and Shria Toren. Despite their distinctly different styles, the artworks are uniified in that they all identify the infinite encased in the intimate. From John Berens hazy, lonely landscapes, through Shira Toren’s meandering beings, and Jeffrey Bishop’s alternate universes, to Jared Deery’s mysteriously subjective still-lives and culminating in Mike Cockrill’s reduced and deconstructed figures, the paintings and sculpture in this show capture a deep contemplation of winter.

About The Artists: John Berens: An associate professor at Parson’s, John Berens has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellwoship in Painting. Mr. Berens paintings are in numerous public collections and are described by ArtNet’s Stephen Maine as “glazey, moody”. More about the artist: http://johnberens.com

Jeffrey Bishop: Jeffrey Bishop has had numerous solo shows notably at the Danforth Museum of Art, the Miami University Art Museum and the San Diego State University Gallery. In Art in America, Matthew Kangas writes about Mr. Bishop’s abstract paintings as having a “indeterminate light source (which) sites the work on an intellectual rather than an emotional or humorous plane.” Jeffrey Bishop most recently completed the Takt Artists Residency in Berlin. More about Jeffrey Bishop: http://jeffreybishop.com

Mike Cockrill: Although some of Mike Cockrill’s artwork has generated controversy, (notably the “White Papers” with Judge Hughes and “Baby Doll Clown Killers”), the artist is also quite sentimental. His latest paintings and sculpture reference a nostalgic sense of time and the memory of suburban comfort. Anthony Haden-Guest writes about Mr. Cockrill: “The pictures (sources) that turn Mike Cockrill on are neither plunder nor cultural markers. They are his ways and means of at once re-experiencing a seemingly enchanted childhood world and decoding it. They are time machines …” More about Mike Cockrill: http://mikecockrill.com

Jared Deery: The art of Jared Deery can be characterized as both intimate and wistful with titles that evoke visual poetry. A graduate of Pratt (BFA) and Hunter College (MFA), Mr. Deery lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. More about Mr. Deery can be found: http://jareddeery.com

Shira Toren: The paintings of Shira Toren present meandering swirls of migrating forms which evoke both the flight of birds and the unconscious procession of human forms in an indistinct landscape. A graduate of Pratt Institute, Ms. Toren is an Israeli-American artist who lives and works in New York City More about Shira Toren: http://shiratoren.com

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Heather Hutchison EXTENDED thru Jan 25

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Heather Hutchison: Here Now

Heather Hutchison’s latest exhibit will continue through Sunday, January 25th at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties, NY. Ms. Hutchison’s work explores the visual ratio of changing light over time, utilizing various transparent materials, color and form. Making the gallery walls part of her canvas, natural light forms ever-changing “paintings” as it travels though bent plexiglas forms, creating fluctuating colors and shadows. The ephemeral subject matter of all the pieces, the passage of time, is bound by one constant: light. To underline this, the artist has also created two video installations: one presented as a traditionally framed Hudson River School painting capturing sunset and moonrise at Saugerties Beach, compressing several hours into minutes, and the other utilizing the reflection of glowing embers to illuminate the gallery’s storefront window. Cindy Moore writes: “Hutchison’s paintings are impossible to experience thorough reproductions. No matter how skilled the photographer, they cannot be captured in a fixed moment. The work is responsive in a way that is alien to traditional painting: as the light shifts, so does the hue”. Maia Damianovic, describing the experience of Hutchison’s work, says: “Our gaze has no privileged or natural access, only fleeting opportunities that may be seized, in Blake’s words, “to catch joy as it flies”. And Eleanor Heartney writes in Art News: “Hutchison demonstrates that Minimalism and metaphor do not make such an odd couple after all.”

Cross Contemporary Art is open Thurs thru Mon, 12-6pm and Tues and Wed by chance or appointment.

About Heather Hutchison: Ms. Hutchison’s work can be found in many museum and public collections including The Smithsonian Institution, The Hammer Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, Harvard Business School as well as Reader’s Digest, Brooklyn Union Gas and Cantor-Fitzgerald art collections. A recipient of both Pollock-Krasner and Gottlieb Foundation Awards, the artist has shown at numerous institutions including The Corcoran Gallery of Art Biennial, Montclair Art Museum and The Brooklyn Museum. She currently lives and works in Saugerties, NY.

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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

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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