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SENSORY IMPACT: American Abstract Artists

Panel discussion moderated by Professor, Max Weintraub.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014, 5:30 to 9:00 PM at the Morgan Stanley Global Headquarters, Purchase, New York. 

The Panel includes Alice Adams, Christine Berry, Phillis Ideal, Stephen Maine, and Stephen Westfall.

I have long maintained that abstraction is the most radical art form we have – newer in its ambiguous essence than all the smart little toys that have come along since--such as video, installations and performance. In all of these toys, the representational and/or recognizable are reinstated, which to me is a step back from the true frontier. 

But of course, abstraction is tough—not easily assimilated. That is why, despite all of its distinguished history and its many talented practitioners, it is still a minority art form.

On the other hand, you might never guess this essentially beleaguered status from the hundreds of folks who have been streaming through the Chelsea gallery of Berry Campbell, this newest and brightest HQ for quality abstraction.

Eric Dever's paintings are in the new James Brown biopic produced by Mick Jagger for Universal Pictures. The movie opens on Friday, August 8 2014.  Stop by the gallery to see his paintings in person.   

Berry Campbell is now a featured gallery on Artnet.com

An exhibition of paintings by Eric Dever, who lives and works in Water Mill, will open today at the Berry Campbell Gallery in Chelsea and run through Aug. 9. Mr. Dever has pursued intensely focused investigations into the methods and materials of painting for more than a decade. In the past his compositions were largely geometric, including concentric circles graded from dark to light and variations on the grid. His most recent work has broadened into free shapes and tactile surfaces, the starting point for which was a rose in his garden that he deconstructed.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, July 10, 2014. Berry Campbell is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings by Eric Dever and Jodie Manasevit.  The opening reception will be held on Thursday, July 10 from 6 to 8 pm.

The other show at Berry Campbell is very different (even if coloristically it harmonizes nicely with Vecsey’s work). This show is paintings by James Walsh.

Walsh belongs to a generation born nearly 20 years before Vecsey (in 1954), but he is still a generation younger than some of those artists who established reputations in the 1960s (such as Poons, born 1937, and Bannard, born 1934. Walsh is still more removed from Noland, Olitski and Frankenthaler, all born in the 1920s).

Berry Campbell is playing host to two solo exhibitions, companionably sharing the same space as the paintings in them alternate along the walls (through July 3).

Both artists are recent graduates (if that’s the word I want) of Spanierman Modern. They have chosen to move to the Chelsea gallery opened just last year by two (likewise) Spanierman grads, Christine Berry and Martha Campbell.

Of the two artists on view at Berry Campbell, Susan Vecsey may be more familiar to the art world at the moment, having been included in Spanierman group shows since 2009, and having had a solo exhibition there in 2010.

There remains a circle of modernists working in New York who trace their roots back to postwar abstraction on Tenth Street and consider themselves to be working with its fundamental concerns. Modernism, it turns out, may be inherently revivalist, and thus a form of permaculture. The problem from the beginning was to look back in order to find a way forward. As Walter Darby Bannard noted, “Any art that is truly radical must also be in some way conservative.” [1]

The newly arrived Berry Campbell Gallery has taken an interest in such work, and is currently showing James Walsh and Susan Vecsey. It’s too soon to call Walsh a senior member of the circle with lions like Bannard and Larry Poons still making beautiful paintings, but he’s been involved and productive within it since the 1980s. Vecsey is younger, but no less invested in Color Field abstraction, though she comes to it by way of the Tonalist landscape.

NEW YORK, NY.- Berry Campbell announces an exhibition of paintings by Susan Vecsey and James Walsh. The opening reception will be held on Thursday, June 5 from 6 to 8 pm. Susan Vecsey, who works in the traditions of Color Field and Tonalist painting, has moved in the direction of Minimalism in her current work. While her compositions are seemingly simple, there is a well-thought-out process for each painting, including preparatory charcoal drawings with calculated geometries and numerous color studies in search of precise color combinations. The size and shape of each canvas are long considered. The materials, the quality of the pigment, and the texture of the linen are just as important as the composition. Paint is applied through pouring or staining. Vecsey states, "With poured paint, timing is everything, and it is important to be decisive with it and also ready to accept or reject the unexpected." Her abstract paintings convey certain emotions and references to nature through their shapes and colors, becoming vehicles for us to access our own memories and experiences. 

More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/70566/Berry-Campbell-Gallery-features-Susan-Vecsey-and-James-Walsh#.U5CWEV7oa5w[/url]
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