JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

Janet Taylor Pickett Entering the Gee’s Bend, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett

In Full Bloom

April – May 2025

In Full Bloom, Janet Taylor Pickett celebrates women, black diasporic culture, and beauty, showcasing selected works from the AKIMBO EXOTICA series produced from 2013 – 2018.  A dress form is ubiquitous in these works, structuring her female-centric narratives and histories writ large.  A metaphor for Black memory and a symbol of identity, Taylor Pickett’s often-ornate works defy linear timeframes and geographic or cultural relationships.  Africa and Europe, past and present, coexist in Taylor Pickett’s work and continue to explore the eternal black female empowerment through beauty and self-possession.  AKIMBO EXOTICA is a portal to the past that declares its story while retaining a patina of mysticism and abstraction—the ownership of Black beauty.

Janet Taylor Pickett Entering the Gee’s Bend, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett

Entering the Gee’s Bend, 2013

Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper

30 x 22 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett The Blooming, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett

The Blooming, 2013

Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper

30 x 22 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett Mud Cloth, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in

Janet Taylor Pickett

Mud Cloth, 2013

Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper

30 x 22 in

Janet Taylor Pickett A Vessel, 2017 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett

A Vessel, 2017

Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper

30 x 22 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett Alma’s Garden, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett

Alma’s Garden, 2013

Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper

30 x 22 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett

Indigo Hands, 2018

Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper

30 x 22 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett Flashes of Joy, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett

Flashes of Joy, 2013

Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper

30 x 22 in.

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SALLY EGBERT

Sally Egbert Floating Sky, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 34 x 47 inches
SALLY EGBERT
 
March, 2025

Sally Egbert  (b. 1958) works and lives in New York.  While her work is primarily abstract, there are suggestions of natural images. How nature and humans combine and collide. The works express potent images of nature abstractly and experimentally. Egbert works with the influence of nature observed in everyday environments and Old Master Art, especially Giotto. Combining collage and painting to connect past and present, she carefully analyzes nature and creates a new abstract language.  Aims for transparency, movement, and subtleness grounded in natural shapes, these shapes are painted collages. This allows the viewer to contemplate and wander in the many subtle layers Egbert applies and then settle on a more deliberate image.  This online exhibition is co-curated by Ella Kang and Jae Kim at  JENNIFER BAAHNG Seoul.

Sally Egbert Floating Sky, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 34 x 47 inches

Sally Egbert

Floating Sky, 2018

Acrylic on canvas

34 x 47 inches

Sally Egbert Sky Flower, 2017 Oil, acrylic, oil pastel, spray paint, watercolor, hand-painted fabric on canvas 60 x 70 inches JBGSE#24101802

Sally Egbert

Sky Flower, 2017

Oil, acrylic, oil pastel, spray paint, watercolor, hand-painted fabric on canvas

60 x 70 inches

3

Sally Egbert

I Do, 2017

Oil, acrylic, oil pastel, spray paint, watercolor, hand-painted fabric on canvas

60 x 70 inches

Sally Egbert Little Purple Cloud, 2019 Oil, acrylic, oil pastel, spray paint, watercolor, hand-painted fabric on canvas 60 x 70 inches JBGSE#24101803

Sally Egbert

Little Purple Cloud, 2019

Oil, acrylic, oil pastel, spray paint, watercolor, hand-painted fabric on canvas

60 x 70 inches

Sally Egbert White Flower, 2021 Oil, hand-painted fabric on canvas 12x 16 inches

Sally Egbert

White Flower, 2021

Oil,  hand-painted fabric on canvas

12x 16 inches

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Categories: online-exhibitions

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SUE MCNALLY

Sue McNally My Winter Wall, 2025 Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 inches

SUE MCNALLY

February – March, 2025

Sue McNally (b. 1967) is a painter in Newport, RI, working in Rhode Island and southeast Utah. She grew up in New England and received a BFA from the University of Rhode Island and an MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Collections include the Addison Gallery of American Art, the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Tamarind Institute Archive, The Worcester Art Museum, The RISD Museum of Art, and The Newport Art Museum.

Sue McNally My Winter Wall, 2025 Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 inches

Sue McNally

My Winter Wall, 2025

Acrylic on canvas,

16 x 20 inches

Sue McNally Winter Desert, 2025 Acrylic on canvas, 64 x 66 inches

Sue McNally

Winter Desert, 2025

Acrylic on canvas,

64 x 66 inches

Sue McNally Winter Walk, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 90 x 133 inches

Sue McNally

Winter Walk, 2023

Acrylic on canvas

90 x 133 inches

Sue McNally Winter, 2021 Oil on Board 12 x 12

Sue McNally

Winter, 2021

Oil on board

12 x 12 inches

Sue McNally Winter Sea, 2020 Oil on Board 12 x 12 inches

Sue McNally

Winter Sea, 2020

Oil on board

12 x 12 inches

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LAURA BELL AND IAN GANASSI

Laura Bell and Ian Ganassi THE CORPSES March 26 - April 30

Madison Ave New York

Laura Bell and Ian Ganassi

THE CORPSES

March 26 – May 3, 2024

Laura Bell, a painter based in the Bronx, and Ian Ganassi, a poet in New Haven, met as artists in residence at the Millay Colony. In 2005, Ian mailed Laura an unfinished poem and handwritten phrases on a piece of printer paper stained with coffee rings, and in an accompanying letter asked her to do something to it. This became the first move in what evolved into their ongoing collaborative collage series, “The Corpses,” titled after the Surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse. With each mailing, words, images, and objects are added and new pieces are started; at any point, either of them can call a work finished. At first it was assumed that Ian would contribute text and Laura visuals, but this division soon dissolved, with Laura adding lines cut from ads or subway handouts and Ian melting crayons and experimenting with paint. They each had already been using collage methods in their own bodies of work, Ian with overheard and appropriated lines in his poems and Laura with photos and laser prints in the grounds of her paintings. 

Pop culture, politics, religion, and poetry make appearances, and recurring images and phrases create echoes and connections. A collage might go back and forth many times or make only one circuit between New Haven and New York. The pieces can be minimal or layered; early ones tended to be more spare, later work often gathered more objects, but over the years this has also followed an ebb and flow. Some pieces develop themes or function almost as diaries (a hospital glove, a postcard), and time frames can be felt in political or current events references. The gathering of materials has become a consuming habit for both of them, combining found objects, text, drawings, ads, photos, fabrics, and all manner of mixed media—a painterly, visceral process, the anti-Photoshop. “The Corpses turned us into scavengers,” Ian has said. “We ended up trying to get the whole world into them.” 

The process has retained its initial sense of play, while also reflecting battles over the obliteration of a passage of paint or text or the declaring of a piece finished. The series quickly demanded a level of intention equal to the work they were publishing and exhibiting individually. Called “joyously Fluxus-like” by Robert Shuster in the Village Voice and described by writer H. Byron Earhart as going “beyond collaborative to a kind of conspiratorial imagination,” “The Corpses” has evolved into more than a decade of personal and material call-and-response. At present, there are more than 300 finished works. A new batch is usually in progress or in transit.

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PRIDE AND INSOUCIANCE

The Muse, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 48x48 in.

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

PRIDE AND INSOUCIANCE

February – April 2024

In Pride and Insouciance, Janet Taylor Pickett’s works serve as a powerful assertion of self-worth and cultural confidence. Resilience and beauty reach a pinnacle in Taylor Pickett’s luminous portraitures. Insouciance mingled with pride, carefree nonchalance balanced by a deliberate indifference to societal expectations, the figures are filled with expectancy and resolve, and embody a continuous longing for social, sexual, and spiritual freedom that is both personal and universal. Pride and Insouciance is a visual manifesto that encourages a profound exploration of the multifaceted nature of Black experiences. The intentional merging of the traditional and the contemporary speaks to the evolving cultural identity, inviting viewers to acknowledge the richness and complexity inherent in celebrating Blackness.  

The Muse, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 48x48 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett

The Muse, 2023

Acrylic on canvas

48×48 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett She’s In The Liminal Space, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 54 x 64 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett

The Liminal, 2023

Acrylic on canvas

48×48 in.

The Enchanted, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 in.

Janet Taylor Pickett

The Enchanted, 2023

Acrylic on canvas

48 x 48 in.

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PINK

R.C. Baker Holy of Holies, 2018 Lava lamp, vintage album and jacket, wood, paint  25 x 17.5 x 8 in.

PINK

September – December 2023

R.C. Baker
Eric Brown
Deborah Buck
Bell and Ganassi
Mr.
Jaye Moon
David Salle

The color pink was used by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and gained prominence as a distinctive hue during the Rococo era in the 18th century. The 20th century marked a shift in its significance, as pink came to be a subject, to convey light, emotion, and a sense of fleeting moments.  The exhibition PINK deconstructs the themes of identity and sexuality, dismantling gender binaries while confronting vulnerability and intimacy.  The artists who harness the power of pink in the featured works wield enormous influence in evoking emotions, questioning norms, and shaping narratives using the multiplicity of interpretation.  PINK is a pursuit of breaking stereotypes, signaling emotional abundance with great vigor. 
R.C. Baker Holy of Holies, 2018 Lava lamp, vintage album and jacket, wood, paint  25 x 17.5 x 8 in.

Holy of Holies exists at the intersection of two legends: Lou Reed and Andy Warhol. Lou claimed that the Velvet Underground’s first album sold only 30,000 copies, yet it became one of the most influential rock records of all time. Andy, the band’s manager, created the banana-peel cover, a sendup of the macho ethos of rock ’n’ roll that neither the gay, devoutly Catholic artist nor the group shared. Holy of Holies is a shrine to a Downtown scene that reveled in camp but suffered no fools. 

R.C. Baker
Holy of Holies, 2018
Lava lamp, vintage album and jacket, wood, paint 
25 x 17.5 x 8 in.
Deborah Buck The Swan, 2023 23 X 19 in. Acrylic and sumi ink on board with vintage ebonite and silver gilt frame

Truman Capote turned women into his swans elevating them to an elegant closed club and the fairy tale The Ugly Duckling.

Deborah Buck

The Swan, 2023

Acrylic and sumi ink on board with vintage ebonite and silver gilt frame

23 X 19 in.

MR. Untitled, 2012 Acrylic painting on the found snowboard 13 x 61 in

Mr.’s work aspires to blur the distinction between the interior and exterior inhabited by familiar objects that are conversely used to communicate the unfamiliar.  Mr.’s ongoing exploration of otaku, the Japanese “cute” subculture marked by an obsession with technology, sci-fi literature, anime, and video games, is characterized by bright colors and uplifting imagery. Like Superflat artists, Mr. approaches the visual language of manga.

MR.

Untitled, 2012

Acrylic painting on the found snowboard

13 x 61 in

Laura Bell and Ian Ganassi The Corpses: Party Like Barbie, 2023 Mixed media on cardboard 14 x 9.5 in.
A Barbie lunchbox keychain from way back when, found in the midst of Barbiemania in a collage bin, and a leftover gadget for filling water balloons with a garden hose, found their way onto a collage of cut-up birthday cards and packaging materials. The resulting explosion pulled in stars and a couple of other miniature accessories, and, of course, lots of pink.
 

Bell and Ganassi

The Corpses: Party Like Barbie, 2023

Mixed media on cardboard

14 x 9.5 in.

Jaye Moon People Like You Need To Fuck People Like Me, 2012 Neon, transformer 2 6 x 35.4 x 2.6 in Edition of 5

The visually striking Neon work, People Like You Need To Fuck People Like Me (2012), is Moon’s rework of Tracey Emin’s iconic People Like You Need To Fuck People Like Me, 2007. Moon transcribed Emin’s tantalizing, confessional message into Braille, and this Braille is converted into numbers. Moon uses this mode of language for the unseen, for its visual and universal utility, to shatter the ice in the silenced discussion of female sexuality.  Emin’s feminist message is widely received in the West, yet in many Asian cultures, expressing sexuality, especially female sexuality, is discouraged.  By translating Emin’s raw message into numerical code, a form of Braille, Moon opens up the possibility to hail the same message without fear of ostracism or penalty.

Jaye Moon

People Like You Need To Fuck People Like Me, 2012

Neon, transformer

2 6 x 35.4 x 2.6 in

Edition of 5

Eric Brown Untitled (4-17), 2020 Color pencil and graphite on paper 14 × 11 in.

Central to Eric Brown’s works on paper is process. The artist is pursuing a new abstract vocabulary through the repetition of mark-making.  In the process, a painterly minimalism emerges that is direct, unadorned, meditative, and intimate. They lend themselves to metaphors of strength and vulnerability, mending, imperfection, and domesticity.

Eric Brown

Untitled (4-17), 2020

Color pencil and graphite on paper

14 × 11 in.

David Salle Overunder (red, blue, white, pink, yellow), 2021 Archival pigment ink print, hand varnished on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm 42 x 42 inches, each Edition of 20

David Salle invokes 19th-century images, 1950s advertisements, graffiti, cartoons, and photographs. He embraces different moods, styles, and sources, and his compositions alternately invite and reject psychological, associative interpretations that offer commentaries on contemporary life.

David Salle

Overunder (red, blue, white, pink, yellow), 2021

Archival pigment ink print, hand varnished on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm

42 x 42 in. , each

Edition of 20

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Categories: online-exhibitions

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES


JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES


Madison Avenue  New York
Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu, PINK and THE CORPSES
October 5 – October 31, 2023

R.C. Baker
Eric Brown
Deborah Buck
Bell and Ganassi
Jaye Moon
Mr.
Janet Taylor Pickett
Zhang Hongtu

We are pleased to announce the group exhibition Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu, PINK and THE CORPSES, which runs from October 5 through October 31, 2023.  The exhibition marks the New York premiere of Janet Taylor Pickett’s works, previously only shown at the Oceanside Museum of Art in California, that probe a personal and collective past to posit a distinctly Black mythology of Self.  

This is also the debut of Zhang Hongtu’s never-before-seen Shan Shui Paintings from his personal collection.  Zhang’s Shan Shui series spans several years and explores the categories of “East” and “West” in a distinctive manner, reflecting his life in two cultures. He reimagines the work of seventeenth-century Chinese artists in the vibrant colors and brushwork of Monet and Vincent van Gogh.

On view includes works by R.C. Baker, Eric Brown, Deborah Buck, Bell and Ganassi, Jaye Moon, and Mr. selected from the online exhibition PINK and THE CORPSES.

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ALREADY AND NOT YET

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May 5 - June 25, 2022
LOVE DIFFERENCE

LOVE DIFFERENCE

Eric Brown, Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu
May 15 - June 15, 2021
the church sag harbor logo

Deborah Buck Participates in Women and Humor

June 23 - September 1, 2024
Deborah Buck Stand Off, 2024 Acrylic and sumi ink on panel 38.25 x 50.25 in.

DEBORAH BUCK

Witches Bridge
May 16 - July 12, 2024
Deborah Buck on view in THE RAINS ARE CHANGING FAST at Heckscher Museum

Heckscher Museum: THE RAINS ARE CHANGING FAST

March 23, 2024 - September 1, 2024
Deborah Buck Heavy Is The Head, 2023 Acrylic, sumi ink on Archers paper 55 x 156 in. Detail

DEBORAH BUCK

INTO THE WILD: To Crash Is Divine
Sept 28 - Oct 27, 2023
Sue McNally Jaye Moon Janet Taylor Pickett

PARADE

June 2025
Jaye Moon F.U.C.k, 2012 Acrylic on canvas 8 x 10 inches

JAYE MOON

PRIVATE
June 1 - 30, 2025
brooklyn museum logo

Brooklyn Museum : The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition

October 4, 2024 – January 26, 2025
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
snowboard

MR.

Snowboard
MR.

MR.

Sue McNally Jaye Moon Janet Taylor Pickett

PARADE

June 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Memory of Water II, 2021 Acrylic and collage on canvas 40 x 40 inches

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

The Selma Burke Invitational African American Art Show
May 30 - June 29, 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Entering the Gee’s Bend, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

April – May, 2025
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
The Muse, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 48x48 in.

PRIDE AND INSOUCIANCE

February - April 2024
Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso Málaga 

Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso Málaga 

October 3, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
(DE)CONSTRUCTING IDEOLOGY: THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND BEYOND November 13, 2022 to March 12, 2023

Zhang Hongtu lectures and exhibits at the Wende Museum

November 13, 2022 - March 12, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Zhang Hongtu

VAN GOGH / BODHIDHARMA

Zhang Hongtu
March 25 - April 27, 2022
LOVE DIFFERENCE

LOVE DIFFERENCE

Eric Brown, Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu
May 15 - June 15, 2021

BRANDON BALLENGÉE

Brandon Ballengée  RIP Great Auk: After John James Audubon, 1858/2023 Bien edition chromolithograph 26 x 39 in., unframed
Is Apple a Design Company?

Apple is more than a tech company; it became a culture unto itself, a passion of most of people and the birthplace of the world’s most revolutionized products.

Madison Ave New York

Brandon Ballengée

L’Art de la Solitude (The Art of Loneliness)

November 10, 2023 – January 27, 2024

L’Art de la Solitude (The Art of Loneliness), Brandon Ballengée’s debut solo exhibition at the gallery, presents a poignant and multifaceted exploration of the interplay between art, biodiversity, and humanity.  Showcasing more than three dozen works selected from the 1990s to 2023, the exhibition is a testament to Ballengée’s engagement with the ongoing ecological crisis and the profound ramifications of species loss, prominently coined as the Anthropocene or Sixth Great Extinction. It is an artistic intervention that beckons viewers to confront the realities and consider the urgent need for preservation and conservation.  L’Art de la Solitude (The Art of Loneliness) runs from November 10 through December 30, 2023, with the OPENING RECEPTION on Friday, November 10, 6 – 8 PM, accompanied by CENTRAL PARK BIRD WALK on November 11 and THE ARTIST TALK on November 18 at the gallery.

Brandon Ballengée, an artist, biologist, and environmental advocate, utilizes a myriad of mediums and artistic expressions to mirror the current ecological predicament.  At the core of this exhibition lie three distinct series, each foraging into the complexities of our environmental challenges:

FRAMES OF ABSENCE

‘Frameworks of Absence,’ initiated in 2006, meticulously embodies the extinct species’ haunting absence.  By physically cutting images of vanished animals from historical prints, Ballengée forges what he terms ‘Frameworks of Absence.’  These assemblages not only signify the species lost but also involve a transformative event, where the burned remains of these cut images are gathered in urns, symbolizing a personal and collective remembrance.

THE CRUDE OIL PAINTINGS

The ‘Crude Oil Paintings’ series, which commenced in 2020, immerses itself in the enigma of lost fish species endemic to the Gulf of Mexico post-Deepwater Horizon spill. The artist embarks on an arduous quest to portray these missing creatures, drawing from preserved specimens and utilizing contaminated sediments and dispersants to craft their haunting portraits. This series serves as a contemplative reflection on what is obscured and irretrievably lost due to our collective treatment of the environment.

SOS PAINTINGS

Continuing his artistic journey into the present and beyond, the ‘SOS Paintings’ provide an introspective look into the looming threat of deep-water mining in the Gulf of Mexico.  These colossal paintings, created using unconventional materials like thrift bed sheets and latex house paint, are interpretations of deep-sea species at risk due to this emerging deep-sea mining industry.  Ballengée captures the mystery and beauty of these enigmatic creatures and ignites contemplation on the potential repercussions of human intervention in this untouched abyssal zone.

L’Art de la Solitude (The Art of Loneliness) is an artistic journey reflecting our ecological plight. Through three compelling series, ‘Frameworks of Absence,’ ‘The Crude Oil Paintings,’ and ‘SOS Paintings,’  Brandon Ballengée epitomizes the essence of loss caused by species extinction and environmental perils. The exhibition’s haunting images of extinct species, the ghostly portrayal of lost Gulf creatures, and the impending threat of deep-sea mining converge. As a catalyst for reflection, the exhibition urges viewers to contemplate the implications of our collective actions on the fragile fabric of our environment.  L’Art de la Solitude (The Art of Loneliness) is a visual poetry and a thought-provoking crusade.


REVIEW:

https://www.villagevoice.com/ecology-minded-artist-brandon-ballengee-pictures-what-weve-lost/

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September 21, 2024 - August 2026
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Germanisches National Museum: HELLO NATURE

October 3, 2024 - March 2, 2025
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Hammer Museum: Breath(E)

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Brandon Ballengée  RIP Great Auk: After John James Audubon, 1858/2023 Bien edition chromolithograph 26 x 39 in., unframed

BRANDON BALLENGÉE

L’Art de la Solitude (The Art of Loneliness)
Nov 10, 2023 - Jan 27, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023

Categories: exhibitions

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DEBORAH BUCK

Deborah Buck Heavy Is The Head, 2023 Acrylic, sumi ink on Archers paper 55 x 156 in. Detail
La MaMa New York
Deborah Buck
INTO THE WILD: To Crash is Divine
Sept 28 – Oct 27, 2023
 
La MaMa Galleria
Guest curated by Jennifer Baahng
 

INTO THE WILD:  To Crash Is Divine

Into The Wild presents the pathbreaking, allegorical works of protean painter and ardent colorist Deborah Buck.  It is a focused solo exhibition showcasing nearly two dozen recent works. An exploration into contemporary concerns, the works are incarnations of Buck’s inquiries on social attitudes, culture and blasphemy, and emotional freedom at once personal and universal.  Elegant and polemical, the art included in Into The Wild attests to Deborah Buck’s arrival at a distinctive narrative filled with fantastically Fauvistic personas and cautionary tales.  Colliding secular with the sacred, the exhibition hints at essential codes that unravel the icons and slogans of our time; protest and provoke.  Into The Wild invites a raw and fresh conversation with playful aesthetics, humor, and imprudence.  It is a baroque fantasy fortress that upholds active pursuit and the joy of queueing.

Born in Mount Holly, New Jersey, Deborah Buck grew up on a farm. Her home provided a fertile environment for creative exploration, which led to the distinctively unique, sculpted, archetypical visual motifs later in her art.  In 1975, she attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, where, at age 18, she was mentored by Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still, who told her: “Nobody can teach you to paint – you already know how. But to be taken seriously, you should learn everything about the world around you – religion, politics, design, science.”  She moved to New York City in 1990 and joined the wave of female artists who gained prominence in New York in the 90s.

ABSURDITY

Into The Wild is Deborah Buck’s response to the absurdity of life.  At the exhibition, first up is an elongated convex wall dedicated to a bizarre, vibrant scene of solo works painted with exuberant colors on 300-pound, hot-pressed Arches paper. The works, each measuring 45 x 55 inches, bear joy, nostalgia, anger, frustration, and love.  They are the ethos of the artist’s thinking and grounding moments: “Bite-Sized,” the virtuoso vision of war; “The Judge,” a sense of primal justice; wacky “House Plants”; “Deep Space Hedges,” the Hamptons; “Coffee (Talk) Clutch;” and “Mr. Nervous,” a possible self-portrait.

THE WILDS AND THE LAURELED 

Deeper into the exhibition is a forest of wilds; “Throw Me A Bone,” “Pig Never Wins,” and “Royal Flush.”  A march of sexy retro magenta and Barbie pink therianthropes who conjure melancholy and compassion.  The tall feature wall unveils three portraits on wood, embellished with period frames; a laureled threesome: “Widow’s Peak,” “I’m No Angel,” and “Dark Roots.”  As part of Buck’s new and ongoing series of portraits of contemporaries, these harken back to the inventor of Cubism, Pablo Picasso’s perspective on abstraction and deconstruction.  Both artists paint their thoughts rather than what they see.

CRASH IS DIVINE

The apotheosis of the exhibition is Deborah Buck’s eclectic tour-de-force murals: “Heavy is the Head” and “The Eyes Have It.”  Striking and enormous, the two murals, which mirror each other and occupy the vast main gallery, are cinematic spectacles depicting nuanced performers, unleashed, intense, and intimate.  They contain shifting facades, overlapping planes, and fragmented, condensed flat surfaces that snap into surprisingly coherent compositions, a conference of pictorial intelligence.  A visual constant in the murals is the strands of pearls, which signify the currency and the agency women hold.   

“Heavy Is the Head” is a commemorative majesty that commands the first wall in the main gallery, comprised of a half dozen of the artist’s solo works cut and collaged.  At about 5 feet tall and 13 feet wide, it is a Surrealist dreamscape of a free-flowing connection to wisdom and knowledge passed down generations of women saints and personages: After Botticelli, Queen Elizabeth I, Empress Dowager Cixi, Venus of Willendorf, Cleopatra, a Bedouin woman, a futuristic female robot, and the artist herself.

“The Eyes Have It” is a multifaceted phosphorous display that commands the second wall.  Also, at about 5 feet tall and 13 feet wide, it contains fragmented visuals that insist on conjecture to be fathomed.  The symbols range from the alchemical to the astrological and the heretical to the folklore.  Grand and engrossing in its spatial genres, the mural is born from the artist’s dozen solo works that were chopped and coalesced back – “The Mechanical Girl and Her Mechanical Dog,” “Easter Bunny Bandit,” “In the Land of Peacock Trees,” “Proud Parents,” and “Enchanted Forest” – and dares us to see the complexity of the objects and ideas in the work.  Notable is the extravagant staging and devising within the flat, two-dimensional work.  Reminiscent of Japanese manga and anime that uses flat planes of color to emphasize the surface, à la Superflat by Takashi Murakami, the mural reinforces Deborah Buck’s commentary on culture with little distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low.’

INFECTIOUS GLEE AND RENEGADE

Into The Wild is a wild west, where convention and fiat are unchained and released, and the world’s traditional satire and viral lampooning are surpassed.  Alluding to Hieronymus Bosh’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” the exhibition is a three-wall-triptych of drawings and murals of fantastical figures and anthropomorphic forms, and portraitures, living on Abstract Expressionistic dripping and scuffed-up grounds.  Combining abstraction and surrealism, Deborah Buck creates rich narratives and invented creatures that quiver with life amongst dreamlike landscapes and allegorical scenes imbued with meaning and emotion.  Through her masterful employment of sumi ink and skilled craftsmanship, she advocates the value of discourse on femininity and identity.  The exhibition is a glimpse into the elusive conquest of making the world to our liking.  Into The Wild is a clever farce that joyously upends normality and delivers infectious glee.  And Deborah Buck relishes being a renegade

Dr. Jennifer Baahng, Guest Curator

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PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

Madison Ave New York

Picasso, Welcome to America

June 15 – September 27, 2023

R.C. Baker

Brandon Ballengée

Romare Bearden

Deborah Buck

Shijia Chen

Billy Copley

Eileen Foti

Björn Meyer-Ebrecht

Jaye Moon

Pablo Picasso

André Raffray

Janet Taylor Pickett

Zhang Hongtu

Every artist since the early 20th century has been influenced by Pablo Picasso.  The protean painter/ sculptor/ printmaker/ ceramicist helped define what “modern” art once was – and is still becoming.  In 1939, MoMA’s staff was gathering 300 works by the world’s “most famous living artist” (according to the museum’s press release) for Picasso: Forty Years of His Art.  A centerpiece of the exhibit was Guernica, his grisaille mural decrying the destruction of the small Basque town by Nazi bombers, in 1937.

Along with Michelangelo and Rembrandt, the name Picasso (1881-1973) has become a synonym – a cliché, even – for “artist.”  But none of the artists in Picasso, Welcome to America see the Spanish-born titan as an old hat.  Instead, these ten Americans find in the European trailblazer constant inspiration and ongoing challenge.  Zhang Hongtu imagines Chairman Mao exposed by glaring illumination similar to the all-seeing lantern in Guernica.  Jaye Moon also reimagines Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece, in When Bob Dylan Meets Picasso, Guernica – using Lego bricks in Braille rather than paint.

The bodies and masks in another Picasso touchstone, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), come under scrutiny from Eileen Foti and André Raffray through substitution and homage.  Billy Copley finds masks in unlikely surroundings, while Janet Taylor Pickett moves effigies aside to place her powerful female figure at center stage.  Deborah Buck turns Picasso’s infamously harsh male gaze around, painting surreal figures that might be asking, “Who’s crying now?”  In Weary of Treading the Earth, from 1945, Romare Bearden, working in watercolor and ink rather than his later signature collage, energizes cubist space with a circus-like palette.  R.C. Baker riffs beyond Picasso’s Blue and Rose periods through primary-colored aluminum printing plates.  Björn Meyer-Ebrecht’s dynamic wood and enamel sculpture strips the figure to cubist angles and voids, while Brandon Ballengée searches for animals that, like Picasso’s minotaurs, are no longer with us. Original works by Pablo Picasso will also be on view, commemorating the 50th anniversary of his death.

All of the artists in this exhibition have been influenced by Picasso’s experiments with form and perspective – his breaking of traditional and academic rules.  Some of the work here also comments on his darker side, while other pieces engage with the social and political aspects of Picasso’s art.  Ultimately, these ten contemporary artists in Picasso, Welcome to America appreciate the formal and aesthetic complexity of a constant innovator.  This great artist was effectively barred from ever visiting the United States because he was a member of the French Communist Party.  But the joke was on the Feds – Picasso has been in America all along.

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