Sasha Meret: Selected Works opens at Rafael Gallery on East 59th Street, Monday, December 12th - 6 - 8 pm

Sasha Meret: Select Works

Rafael Gallery, 235 East 59th Street, NYC

December 12 – 22, 2016; January 5 – 23, 2017

Opening on Monday, December 12th, 6 - 8 PM

Rafael Gallery is pleased to present Sasha Meret: Selected Works, which complements this internationally-acclaimed artist’s participation in the exhibition Bedazzled, concurrently on view at Lehman College Gallery through January 14^th.  Our show begins on December 12^nd  with an opening reception from 6 – 8 PM.  Curated by Beth S. Gersh-Nešić, the director of the New York Arts Exchange, this particular exhibition contextualizes Sasha Meret’s extraordinarily complex installation, Agendada: Books of Hours, 2010-16, at Lehman College, through its grouping of informative sculptures, photographs and paintings. Meret’s entire body of work draws from the influence of Dada, Surrealism, Conceptual Art and Quantum Mechanics – among many other sources.  It is a heady mix that infuses Meret’s visual language with a phantasmagorical expression, evident in his elaborate sculptures, assemblages, installations, paintings, photographs, drawings, prints and videos – on view in the exhibition space and also in photographs. “The main ingredients in art are mystery, surprise and spontaneity,” Meret explained. “You have to create the environment for the accidents to breathe . . . to invite happy accidents.  This is part of my process.”

Queztelcoatl, 2007-8

The son of Romanian and Russian parents, Sasha Meret was born in Transylvania in 1955.  He completed an MA in economics in 1977 and then moved to New York in 1987 to pursue his true passion, art, at Columbia University. There, he studied printmaking with Tony Harrison.  In 1994, he joined the International Art Group “Gaia” in France.  Over the last 26 years, Meret has exhibited all over the world, most notably in China, Japan, Italy, France, Switzerland, and the US.  Recently, he orchestrated an exhibition and performance piece at AmyD Arte Spazio in Milan.  He has been honored with an exhibition at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York.  His wearable fashion was featured in XEX Magazine (October 5, 2012). 

The Divine Thirst Quencher, 2010

Founded in 1948 by Rafael Aryeh, Rafael Gallery specializes in Old Master, Nineteenth Century, Modern and Contemporary art and antiques from all over the world and Native American art of various media.  In 1978, the gallery established its main exhibition space at 1020 Madison Avenue.  Now under the leadership of Benjamin Aryeh, the gallery has expanded to three locations.  The East 59^th Street galleries, situated in the heart of the Decorators and Design District, are dedicated to Modern and Contemporary masters.

Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11:30 AM to 6:30 PM.  For more information, contact Associate Director Wade Bonds at wade.gallery59@gmail.com or (212) 755-4888.

Last Call: Picasso Sculpture at MoMA and Frank Stella at the Whitney

Pablo Picasso, Bull, 1942

Two of the best Fall shows will close this weekend:  

Picasso Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, an extraordinary experience that may happen only once in a lifetime.  Taking up the entire 4th floor, it is a tour-de-force of curation and pleasure.  The master knew no boundaries - ever fertile and witty.

Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd St., www.moma.org

Special hours - February 6th and 7th until 12 am.   Half-price after 5:30 pm.

Frank Stella, Harran II, 1967

Frank Stella: Retrospective at the Whitney is a magnificent display of this American master's inventiveness and versatility: a rare opportunity to see his severe Hard-Edge paintings give way to the heady lyricism of his later work -  sheer bliss from start to finish.

The Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort St.: http://whitney.org/Visit 

Hours: Saturday 10:30 am - 10 pm; Sunday, 10:30 am - 6 pm.

Enjoy!

Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director

New York Arts Exchange

www.nyarts-exchange.com

Last Call: "Sculpture in the Age of Donatello" at the Museum of Biblical Art through June 14th

Donatello, Prophet Habbakah (Lo Zuccone - Melon Head), 1423-35

Image Courtesy Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore / Antonio Quattrone

The Museum of Biblical Art will close their magnificent exhibition of 15th century Florentine master sculptors this Sunday, June 14th.  Composed of 23 works and a model of the famous dome of the Cathedral in Florence, this extraordinary opportunity captures the flowering of the Italian Early Renaissance as it embraced the humanistic expressions of Greco-Roman art.. (For those who read Ross King's wonderful book Brunelleschi's Dome, this exhibition is especially welcome.)

Detail from Donatello, Sacrifice of  Isaac, c. 1421

Image Courtesy Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore / Antonio Quattrone

MoBIA explains: "This tightly focused exhibition features works all created as components of larger programs for the exterior and interior of the Cathedral from around 1400 until 1450. They include statues and reliefs by Nanni di Banco and Donatello from the lateral entry known as the 'Porta della Mandorla'; two larger-than-life seated evangelist figures made to flank the church’s main western portal, again by Nanni and Donatello; two of Donatello’s life-size figures of Old Testament personages from the Bell Tower; and three of the hexagonal reliefs carved by Luca della Robbia to complete a fourteenth-century series of scenes of Florentine life, also from the Bell Tower. In addition, the exhibition includes the two bronze heads with which Donatello adorned his 'cantoria', or singing gallery, inside the Cathedral in 1439. Also on view will be two Brunelleschi wood models of the dome—one relating to the overall structure and the other to the titanic lantern—and three early fifteenth-century stone reliefs derived from scenes on Ghiberti’s first bronze doors for the Baptistery facing the Cathedral.  

Donatello, St. John the Evangelist, c. 1408-11

Image Courtesy Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore / Antonio Quattrone

"The significance of the exhibition derives in part from its single-site specificity. Sculpture in the Age of Donatello brings together objects made for the same location by artists who knew each other personally, offering a moving, close-up look at the project which more than any other shaped the early Florentine Renaissance: the completion of 'Il Duomo'."

Nanni di Banco, St. Luke, c. 1408

Image Courtesy Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore / Antonio Quattrone

• Nanni di Banco
  Saint Luke, c. 1408
  Image Courtesy Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore / Antonio Quattrone
• 
  

The installation of the works is outstanding.  And a film leads you through the Duomo in a manner that is breathtaking.

You will not want to miss this extraordinary collection of truly beautiful works of art.

(MoBIA is not far from the Museum of Art and Design, at Columbus Circle.  At MAD you will find Pathmakers, on women designers, which is excellent! Pathmakers closes on September 30th.)

Enjoy!

Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director

New York Arts Exchange

www.nyarts-exchange.com

Gay Pride Weekend 2013 and Patricia Cronin's Memorial to a Marriage Reconsidered

Gay Pride March 2013, begins 11 am at Fifth Avenue and 36th St.

New York Arts Exchange salutes Gay Pride Weekend with a big shout out to the Supreme Court for striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, of 1996.  How wonderful to celebrate together this landmark decision.

With that in mind, I am thinking of Patricia Cronin's masterpiece Memorial to a Marriage (2002) and the significance of the work within the context of this new development.  Will it lose its transgressive edginess which galvanizes so much of Cronin's work?  Maybe . . .maybe not.  Only time will tell.

Once again, here is my review of the artist's exhibition "Bodies and Soul" which took place in Washington, DC in 2011

                  

             

Patricia Cronin, Memorial to a Marriage, 2002 in bronze and marble.

Patricia Cronin: Bodies and Soul, Conner Gallery, Washington, DC , Febuary 4 - March 10, 2011

In July 2010, this blog celebrated the marriage of New York artists Patricia Cronin and Deborah Kass, whose long-time commitment inspired Cronin's sculpture Memorial to a Marriage, 2002, permanently installed in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.  The marble mortuary sculpture was meant to accomplish in death that which seemed - in 2002 -  impossible in life.

Now the exhibition of the bronze version of this sculpture, on view at Conner Gallery in Washington, DC, celebrates the transition of this artwork from depicting a dream to immortalizing reality. 

Memorial to a Marriage is based on Gustave Courbet's Sleepers or Sleep (1866)

Gustave Courbet, The Sleepers, 1866

and the American neoclassical tradition of the 19th century (Patricia Cronin studied and appropriated Harriet Hosmer's work for her exhibition Harriet Hosmer: Lost and Found  (June 2009-January 2010).

Harriet Hosmer, Beatrice Cenci, 1856.

We have in Cronin's sculpture what the artist calls "institutional critique."

For more information on Patricia Cronin's work, please visit her website:http://www.patriciacronin.net/. 
And read her interview in Sculpture Magazine.


Vive l'amour et la passion,
Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director

New York Arts Exchange

www.nyarts-exchange.com

Malcolm D. MacDougall III: Parallel Worlds, extended to January 12

Malcolm D. MacDougall III, Rhizomes, 2010

Stainless Steel and Cast Bronze, 84" x 48" x 24"

Courtesy of the Artist

Today, 287 Spring Gallery and Performance Space announced that their current exhibition, Malcolm D. MacDougall III: Parallel Worlds, has been extended to Saturday, January 12, 2013.  A closing reception will take place on Friday, January 11 from 6-9 pm.  
Address: 287 Spring Street, NYC 10013 (between Varick and Hudson Streets).

Malcolm D. MacDougall III, Parallel Worlds of Truth and Illusion, 2009

Cast Bronze and Steel, 42" x 26" x 16"

Courtesy of the Artist

MacDougall's enormous Microscopic Landscape, 2010, remains on view through January 2013.
(Seen here on Purchase College campus.)

For more information about MacDougall's work, please read my review of his work posted on About.com: Art History.  Or, better yet, purchase the exhibition catalog.  It's $20, available at 287 Spring Gallery. (I wrote the catalog essay and curated the show.)  

Please contact curator Ivan Savvine to order a copy by mail: info@287spring.com

Also visit Malcolm MacDougall's website, where you will see more of his fabulous sculptures and an exciting video about his process.

Beth New York

aka Beth Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director

New York Arts Exchange

www.nyarts-exchange.com