John Davis Gallery On Saturday, July 25th the gallery will have five solo shows (sculpture and paintings). The work will be on display through August 16th with a reception for the artists on Saturday, July 25th from 6:00 until 8:00 p.m. Main Galleries Janice Nowinski Recent Paintings "Lately, some of the paintings I have been making spring from snapshots that I have taken. These snapshots are a catalyst for my image making. I am basically taking a situation that happened in a moment and am reconfiguring it on the canvas. This has been surprisingly fertile territory. I am not alone here: Degas, Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse, Alex Katz, Francis Bacon are other artists who took advantage of the ability of the camera to capture a moment that would have been lost or misremembered." Janice Nowinski
Sculpture Garden Ground Floor & Carriage House Ben Butler Sculpture "My sculptures reflect the sensibility that an object stands as a momentary physical manifestation of an ongoing process. They provide evidence of unseen forces, and they point to the distinction between the human and the non-human. Throughout the natural world, unexpected complexity emerges from simple, persistent processes. When the order of things is not readily apparent, complexity is often mistaken for chaos. In the rush to comprehend we often miss the wonderful unseen forces at work. My response is to play in these boundaries between the simple and the complex, as it veers toward the overwhelming. This new work represents a shift in focus from constructed wood sculptures to cast and carved work incorporating a range of new materials. Rather than being built slowly and incrementally in a linear progression, these forms are generated fairly quickly and spontaneously through a unique casting process. The technique involves a close interplay between carved polystyrene and cast gypsum cement. An abundance of forms are generated through intuitive experimentation carved polystyrene voids become molds for casting, and those casts then inform further carving. The resultant forms are then carefully edited and refined, or dissected and reconfigured. The finished work appears to be in flux, simultaneously emerging and dissolving, evoking a richness of process." Ben Butler, 2015
Carriage House, 2nd Floor Vilaykorn Sayaphet Family and Friends, to my mother Vilaykorn Sayaphet (1976) is a Laotian born painter. His work is a deeply personal meditation on finding inner truth. His art studio features two chairs facing one another. In one seat is the artist, brush in hand. In the other a wood panel leans against the back. The seat is full of bright sludges of oil paint. The scene is a home against a wide windswept landscape. His windows are open and the summer breezes come through. His eyes close and he trusts instinct. The body of work that the artist is exhibiting has been produced since his September 2014 solo exhibition Latmanikham & Thongsy at English Kills Art Gallery. Named for his mother and father, the show received positive criticism in Hyperallergic. He maintains a studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Carriage House, Third Floor Melinda Stickney Gibson Nothing but Love Songs I struggle when asked to write an artist statement because the urge for verbosity can become strong, and the result not very enlightening. So, this time I am attempting to reduce a whole lot of the conversation in my head to what feels fundamental about the paintings for me. The Paintings: They re beautiful. They re autobiographical. They re just paintings. They are informed by the formal, historical, accepted constructs of painting. They re documenting bits of this life we re all in, while also attempting to keep irony and cynicism at bay. Most of the time. They re honest. All of the above is true. For now. Melinda Stickney Gibson, 2015
Carriage House, Fourth Floor Laurel Sucsy Paintings "I pay attention to the weight of color, to its material feel, to patches of pigment. The rhythmic arrangements of these patches characterize the work. Layering creates depth and distance not through perspective, but through accumulation of materials and textures. Incongruous color combinations- delicate, faded, or vibrant- oscillate. My primary interest is in discovering. For me painting is about holding time, delineating consciousness through moments looking. Transitions between how and where things meet become a way of giving form to relationships otherwise invisible. When a painting is able to give back a quality of time, it is done. More often than not, the work implies a certain shifting, non-settling, ongoing process." Laurel Sucsy, 2015 Gallery hours are Thursday through Monday, 11:00 till 5:00 p.m. For further information about the gallery, the artists and upcoming exhibitions, visit www.johndavisgallery.com or contact John Davis directly at 518.828.5907 or via e-mail: art@johndavisgallery.com. High resolution images are available upon request.