Frank Wimberley

Artist's Choice: Interconnected
May 7 - June 7, 2020
View Exhibition

Berry Campbell is pleased to announce Artist’s Choice: Interconnected, an exclusive online exhibition of works from gallery’s inventory chosen by Berry Campbell’s represented contemporary artists. Eric Dever, Judith Godwin, Ken Greenleaf, Jill Nathanson, Ann Purcell, Mike Solomon, Susan Vecsey, James Walsh, Joyce Weinstein, and Frank Wimberley have thoughtfully selected one work from our gallery inventory that they associate with their own creative process and artistic journey. This artist-curated exhibition is an inquiry into the lines of influence and connections within our Berry Campbell artist community. Artist’s Choice: Interconnected launches digitally May 7, 2020.

The choices are sometimes expected, and at other times, surprising.  Some artists were inspired by a painting from an artist they had never met, and others paid tribute to old friends or mentors.  Judith Godwin recalls good times with her old friend and art dealer, Betty Parsons.  James Walsh remembers a painting by Walter Darby Bannard from a 1981 show at Knoedler Gallery.  Mike Solomon pays homage to the perseverance of abstract painter and dear friend, Frank Wimberley saying: “The quiet intermingling of his experience, with the purity of painting, gives his abstractions an authenticity and delicacy that is profound to witness.”  Ken Greenleaf favorite is Cloistered #5 (1968) by Ida Kohlmeyer, delighting in the pure abstraction.  Jill Nathanson picked a color-field forerunner, Dan Christensen.  Ann Purcell admitted to being picky but found true inspiration after visiting our Yvonne Thomas show repeatedly.  Eric Dever ruminates about Charlotte Park: “Like a favorite poem, novel or even film, a painting can be a touchstone, something one returns to with certain regularity; perhaps a gauge of some kind, beginning with personal happiness on the occasion of discovery and new revelation as our lives unfold.”  Joyce Weinstein finds parallels with John Opper.  Susan Vecsey loves the “stillness and movement” of Elaine de Kooning’s Six Horses, Blue Wall (1987).  No coincidence that Vecsey lives down the road from the Elaine de Kooning house in the Hamptons. Frank Wimberley recalls of Herman Cherry: “He was one of the East End artists who wished to me to succeed.”

ABOUT BERRY CAMPBELL
Christine Berry and Martha Campbell have many parallels in their backgrounds and interests. Both studied art history in college, began their careers in the museum world, and later worked together at a major gallery in midtown Manhattan. Most importantly, however, Berry and Campbell share a curatorial vision.

Both art dealers developed a strong emphasis on research and networking with artists and scholars during their art world years. They decided to work together, opening Berry Campbell Gallery in 2013 in the heart of New York's Chelsea art district, at 530 West 24th Street on the ground floor. In 2015, the gallery expanded, doubling its size with an additional 2,000 square feet of exhibition space.

Highlighting a selection of postwar and contemporary artists, the gallery fulfills an important gap in the art world, revealing a depth within American modernism that is just beginning to be understood, encompassing the many artists who were left behind due to race, gender, or geography-beyond such legendary figures as Pollock and de Kooning. Since its inception, the gallery has been especially instrumental in giving women artists long overdue consideration, an effort that museums have only just begun to take up, such as in the 2016 traveling exhibition, Women of Abstract Expressionism, curated by University of Denver professor Gwen F. Chanzit. This show featured work by Perle Fine and Judith Godwin, both represented by Berry Campbell, along with that of Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell. In 2019, Berry Campbell's exhibition, Yvonne Thomas: Windows and Variations (Paintings 1963 - 1965) was reviewed by Roberta Smith for the New York Times, in which Smith wrote that Thomas, "... kept her hand in, adding a fresh directness of touch, and the results give her a place in the still-emerging saga of postwar American abstraction.”

In addition to Perle Fine and Judith Godwin, artists whose work is represented by the gallery include Edward Avedisian, Walter Darby Bannard, Stanley Boxer, Dan Christensen, Eric Dever, John Goodyear, Ken Greenleaf, Raymond Hendler, Ida Kohlmeyer, Jill Nathanson, John Opper, Stephen Pace, Charlotte Park, William Perehudoff, Ann Purcell, Mike Solomon, Syd Solomon, Albert Stadler, Yvonne Thomas, Susan Vecsey, James Walsh, Joyce Weinstein, Frank Wimberley, Larry Zox, and Edward Zutrau. The gallery has helped promote many of these artists' careers in museum shows including that of Bannard at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2018-19); Syd Solomon, in a traveling museum show which culminates at the John and Mable Ringling Museum in Sarasota and has been extended through 2021; Stephen Pace at The McCutchan Art Center/Pace Galleries at the University of Southern Indiana (2018) and at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (2019); and Vecsey and Mike Solomon at the Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina (2017 and 2019, respectively); and Eric Dever at the Suffolk Community College, Riverhead, New York (2020). In an April 3, 2020 New York Times review of Berry Campbell's exhibition of Ida Kohlmeyer's Cloistered paintings, Roberta Smith stated: “These paintings stunningly sum up a moment when Minimalism was giving way to or being complicated by something more emotionally challenging and implicitly feminine and feminist. They could hang in any museum.”

Collaboration is an important aspect of the gallery. With the widened inquiries and understandings that have resulted from their ongoing discussions about the art world canon, the dealers feel a continual sense of excitement in the discoveries of artists and research still to be made.

Berry Campbell is located in the heart of the Chelsea Arts District at 530 West 24th Street, Ground Floor, New York, NY 10011.  For further information, contact us at 212.924.2178, info@berrycampbell.com or www.berrycampbell.com.

“The Shape of Abstraction: Selections From the Ollie Collection” at the Saint Louis Art Museum
September 17, 2019–March 8, 2020

In 2017, arts patron and Saint Louis native Ronald Ollie and his wife Monique gifted 81 works by black abstract artists to the St. Louis Art Museum, including examples by Norman Lewis, Sam Gilliam, Chakaia Booker, James Little, and others. The works, while focused on contemporary art, date back to the 1940s, when a generational shift in abstraction was afoot.

The Saint Louis Art Museum is located at One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri; general admission is free.

Frank Wimberley is not one for procrastination.

Historically, the Sag Harbor-based painter has conceptualized and executed his annual creation for the East End Hospice “Box Art Auction” months ahead of schedule.

Until this year, that is.

For the first time in nearly two decades, the artist was feeling the pressure, considering people are still talking about last summer’s auction — an event he has never missed in its 18 years, and a night he will never forget.

“You know what happened last year, right?” Mr. Wimberley asked with a goodhearted laugh. “I got a bid of the highest it has ever been — a bid of $10,000! I thought it was absolutely amazing. Everybody cheered and jumped up and down. We still can’t get over it. I was at the Parrish Art Museum the other day and they say, ‘You’re the guy!’ It’s nice when somebody remembers you! Everybody likes to be remembered.”

The 92-year-old artist was feeling optimistic ahead of this year’s 19th annual auction on Saturday, August 24, at St. Luke’s Church in East Hampton, where bidders flock to see the collection of small, unadorned boxes transformed into one-of-a-kind creations by some 90 East End artists.

Mise en Scene Design

Summer may be halfway over, womp womp, but there is still time to brighten up and refresh your space with artwork. Whether you want to add pops of color to your living room or do a full-blown redo of your house, we’ve got five solid tips on how to incorporate artwork into your home to give it that new look. 

1. Add Pops of Color

To bring your home to life, swap in some light color abstract paintings for wall décor. Any pop of color will brighten the room, giving it a new, cozy and inviting feel. Colorful artwork is perfect for any neutral color walls in the home, and a simple painting can do the trick!

2. Showcase High-End Pieces

If you are an avid art collector or have wiggle room in your budget, try adding a vintage art piece to your walls in your home. Syd Solomon, who was a notable American abstract artist, shares work such as the one below which adds an extra touch to any room.

3. Travel Shots

Incorporating one’s vacation pictures on the wall is the perfect way to decorate a home while giving a more personal and natural feel. Saving your vacation photos then throwing it into a beautiful frame can look fantastic in any room, and also shows off your adventures.

4. Art Sculptures

For a livelier feel, homeowners can accessorize their homes with art sculptures that are sure to make any room pop. Art sculptures are terrific because they serve as a unique decoration, but can also be used to fill up a room.



5. Determine a Theme

From florals to bold colors to fun prints, make your home feel like a tropical getaway or a calming cottage to escape to. Landing on a theme in your summer home can help determine the type of art décor you plan to showcase. It’s crucial to incorporate bright, flashy colors to portray warmth and light.

From the moment I walked into the solo show “Frank Wimberley” at Berry Campbell in Chelsea, I became thoroughly engaged with Wimberley’s textural paintings. The works convey an exhilarating sense of freedom as well as a consistent vision: one major painting after another, evidencing some of the most original and varied paint handling I’ve seen.

On view through July 3, 2019, “Frank Wimberley” is a near survey and presents 20 paintings that roam across the decades (including recent works). Now 92 years old, Wimberley proves that he is still vibrant and active as an artist. He evolved as a pure painter, largely eschewing overt sociopolitical themes in his work and became exemplary of American abstraction’s mainstream; an expressionist responding to free association and guided solely by his own taste and intuition.

More than a century ago, Wassily Kandinsky asked whether purely abstract art could ever achieve the same emotional effect as music. Since the 1950s, Frank Wimberley has been proving that it can, by simply doing it—composing images that pull the human mind and heart along on a journey of feeling, same as a symphony might. One year ago, Berry Campbell gallery in New York announced it had signed Wimberley to the roster of artists the gallery represents. Their highly anticipated first solo exhibition of his work just opened on 30 May. Featuring more than 30 paintings spanning from the early days of his career to works created just this year, the museum quality exhibition breathes fresh life into the landscape of contemporary American abstraction. In fact, the emotional content of these paintings is so condensed it is frankly difficult to experience the whole exhibition in one visit. Wimberley starts each painting with what he calls an “attack”—an instinctive incursion into the blankness. That first, intuitive confrontation with the unknown territory of the surface leaves behind a known quantity: a mark. Like a mystical boat carrying the rider across a spiritual river into the netherworld, that first mark guides Wimberley along through the composition, collaborating with him on a series of choices that lead the picture to its unimaginable, yet inescapable aesthetic conclusions. Imagine a jazz trio: the drummer strikes the snare drum; the keyboard player riffs on that sound; the horn player follows suit; a tempo emerges; finally, the improvisation takes on a life of its own and pulls the players along till it plays itself out. This is how Wimberley paints. Like a listener at a jazz concert, a viewer at this Wimberley exhibition may be best served by an attitude of openness verging on surrender. Pick a starting point and let your eye establish its own tempo. The composition will carry you along.