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Agora Art Gallery – Contemporary Art Dealers

June 2 - 23, 2009
Reception: Thursday, June 04, 2009, 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Gallery Location: 530 West 25th St, Chelsea, New York
Gallery Hours: Tues - Sat, 11am - 6pm

Lorraine Folb  Monika Grygier  Per Hillo  Simon Matheu  Jasnica Klara Matić  Kerrie Warren  Hidekazu Ishikawa  
Juan Lopezdabdoub  Stephane PEDNÒ  Tim Stensland  Hanna Vater  Terry Wang  

The Substance of Abstraction

In The Substance of Abstraction audiences are presented with a rich kaleidoscope of color, form, and texture that in conjunction breathes life into abstract artworks. Whether employing shimmering brushstrokes or bold fields of color, nonrepresentational art, with its lack of familiar forms, allows the work speak to us on an especially elemental level. Through their deeply personal forms of expression, these artists offer a stunning glimpse into contemporary abstract painting.

Lorraine Folb

Lorraine FolbLorraine Folb

Painter Lorraine Folb – born and raised in South Africa, now based in Sydney, Australia – moves between expressionism and abstraction in warm-colored mixed-media canvases. Generally dominated by alternately bold and subdued earth tones, her purified figures often recall the shorthand symbols of Joan Miró's late work: slender parallel lines simply adorned succinctly evoke the human form; colorful squares bisected by tall rectangles conjure homes with open doors and a welcoming, communal warmth. In other works any distinction between figure and ground breaks down, and Folb gives her forms over to the free play of abstraction.

 

Many of her expressionist works refer to her native South Africa, depicting traditional artifacts and objects, and rituals of rural life. These works also connect Folb's country of origin and adoptive Australia, both of which feature massive earthy, sun-scorched, expansive landscapes in their interiors. Her abstracted works, meanwhile, maintain a similar palette and style but offer more opportunity for contemplation, guiding the eye gently across their various planes.  

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We Can Work it Out
"We Can Work it Out"

Electric Youth
"Electric Youth"

Monika Grygier

Monika GrygierMonika Grygier

Manipulating planes and spaces to represent urbanism, space and human activity, Polish painter Monika Grygier sets her acrylic works at specific places and times. Her urban vision recalls Piet Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie Woogie," although where that work unambiguously saw street activity from the night sky, Grygier adopts multiple perspectives. In certain works we seem to watch a frenzied bluish rush of commuting cars as if from a traffic helicopter, in others we look up the grayed sides of buildings from street-level, or see pedestrians filtering down sidewalks splashed with early morning's orange sunlight.

Regardless of the perspective she adopts, Grygier is able to imbue even works with cold grey and brown palettes with a sense of bustling activity and wonder that speaks to an irrepressible cosmopolitanism. Here, life and street life are one and the same. Certain brushstrokes confidently trace a thick, bold strut, some form a self-conscious trickle and others move in scrawled starts and fits as though distracted by the immensity of forces around them.

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Lunes a Las 15:20 En La Ciudad
"Lunes a Las 15:20 En La Ciudad"

Viernes a Las 19:20 En La Ciudad
"Viernes a Las 19:20 En La Ciudad"

Per Hillo

Per HilloPer Hillo

Per Hillo’s paintings and sculptures are soothingly understated and unaffected, striking the perfect balance between stability and spontaneity. Hillo’s figures and shapes have an intrinsic grace, like they organically emerged out of the colors and brushstrokes that make up each painting. Yet the organic characteristics of Hillo’s art contrast its underlying orderliness. Geometric patterns and evenly distributed line work give his paintings and sculptures an egalitarian consistency, emphasizing the fact that every figure, shape and mark exists a single, flattened plane. This interaction between natural, spontaneous beauty and intentionality is what makes Hillo’s art compelling.

 

Ultimately, Per Hillo’s work harmonizes rawness and constancy, making eruptions of texture and expressionistic strokes seem part of a larger, ordered plan. Inspired by romanticism, Hillo constantly explores the complexities of nature and emotion, inviting his viewers to explore with him. His art belongs to numerous corporate collectors and has appeared on album covers. Hillo lives and works in Slagelse, Denmark.

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Lucky to Be
"Lucky to Be"

Together We Can
"Together We Can"

Simon Matheu

Simon MatheuSimon Matheu

Simon Matheu couples painterly gravitas with light-hearted wit. He uses acrylic spotting, a technique he developed himself, to turn his paintings into sumptuous parapets of color and movement. Though Matheu’s primary medium may be acrylic, he does not hesitate to incorporate other textures and forms. The diversity and energy of Matheu’s work keep it endlessly engaging: the dynamic thickness of a figure’s clothing might erupt against the solidity of the ground or uproarious accretions of paint might part to reveal the familiar gray of newspaper pages underneath.

 

Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism all populate Matheu’s artistic lineage. He calls his own work Expressive Figuration and keeps alive the vigor and forward-looking optimism that appeared in work of his predecessors. He traffics in bold, primary colors, celebrating the idiosyncrasies of the human form and the strangeness of social situations. Tirelessly exuberant, Matheu’s paintings encapsulate the density that characterizes daily life. Matheu lives and works in Bisaurri and San Cugat del Valles, Spain. 

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El Reloj de Pulsera (Secretos)
"El Reloj de Pulsera (Secretos)"

Con Las Converses
"Con Las Converses"

Jasnica Klara Matić

Jasnica Klara MatićJasnica Klara Matić

Jasnica Klara Matić creates sensitive woodblock prints that are at once primitive and modern, disarming the viewer through a worldview that focuses on the simple pleasures including dance, love and nature. Matić’s sense of texture plays a central role in her creative process, incorporating unusual media into the imagery including salt, spices, incense and wax, a number  of which are connected to traditional healing properties. Many of her protagonists and accompanying natural features are rendered in a gauzy approach, remaining anonymous and allowing viewers to place themselves within the context of her fascinating world.

 

Born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Matić’s history is at a cultural crossroads. She studied spiritual healing techniques and skills, and traveled a great deal throughout Egypt, the Sinai, South Korea and Tunisia. This expansive worldview is readily apparent in her work, with obvious influences of prehistoric art melded with a distinctive contemporary aesthetic.  There is a natural feel to Matić’s work as her inspiring tableaux seem to flow effortlessly, reminding her audience of the bounty of life’s joy.

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Michael
"Michael"

I am a Part of Everything That is
"I am a Part of Everything That is"

Kerrie Warren

Kerrie WarrenKerrie Warren

Australian artist, Kerrie Warren's paintings show an attention to detail that is rare in abstract expressionist works. Striving to bypass self-censoring thought, her deliberate choice of colors and textures reveal an intensity of focus and sensitivity to composition across the entirety of the canvas space. With these gestural works, Kerrie is firmly in the tradition of an artist plunging straight from her heart to ours. She captures the moment of creation by which the weight and quality of the paint itself is offered as a powerful form of communication.

While at times these works encompass a wide range of colors, Kerrie also paints with a narrower palette, and thus achieves a subtle yet equally intense mood. However, whether the moments she is communicating involve a liberal range of shades, or more detailed, almost frenzied droplets, Kerrie Warren's works all share a common strength, the union of spontaneity and structure. Kerrie Warren works as a full time artist from her studio in Crossover, Australia.

 

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Patterns in Chaos
"Patterns in Chaos"

Big Dreaming, New York!
"Big Dreaming, New York!"


Unbound Perspectives

By exploring such undiscovered vantage points and often-overlooked inspirations, this collection of artists was selected because they present the world to viewers with an unusual candor. Whether with grit or finesse, the paintings grouped together in Unbound Perspectives display a timeless artistic past time: to unseat the audience from their comfortable and mundane perceptions of reality.

Hidekazu Ishikawa

Hidekazu IshikawaHidekazu Ishikawa

Hidekazu Ishikawa's mixed media work has a Rauschenberg-like freedom, bringing disparate materials together into discordantly beautiful compositions. Though he works in digital prints, collage and assemblage, Ishikawa sees painting as the foundation of his practice. His objects and images have painterly expressiveness and they connote a range of sentiments, from whimsically lighthearted to nostalgically aged and austere. Even his roughest assemblages have tenderness to them, suggesting an appreciation of the life and death process that brings both freshness and decay.

Ishikawa gives each element of his compositions equal space and import―a collaged image has as much visual weight as a painted flower―and his work has a strong, autonomous energy that suggests its self-confidence.


Hidekazu Ishikawa, who was born in Tokyo, studied at West Hills College in the United States and then returned to Tokyo where he studied at Tokyo Institute of Art and Design. Ishikawa has been exhibiting since 2004. He currently lives and works in Tokyo.

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Rust
"Rust"

Untitled 2
"Untitled 2"

Juan Lopezdabdoub

Juan LopezdabdoubJuan Lopezdabdoub

Juan Lopezdabdoub creates profoundly allegorical painted works to depict the inherent contradictions he observes around him. He sees the world as one full of delirium, delusion, obsession and fanaticism, which drive the unconscious to extremes. These dramatic opposites in turn translate onto the canvas as jarring juxtapositions with little gray area between their polarized imageries. Lopezdabdoub directs the viewer to decipher his allegories as a reader would decipher a text: "I think of my paintings as sociological, political, philosophical and psychological visual essays. I use symbols and make references to mythology and culture to engage the viewer in conversations about the most basic meaning of life and to enrich and deepen our understanding of the human condition." Indeed, the paintings task the viewer with translating the disparate elements of political histories and psychological narratives that are scattered throughout the compositions, sometimes readily legible and sometimes mysteriously cryptic.

Born and raised in El Salvador, Juan Lopezdabdoub moved to Canada with his family in 1991 leaving a Salvadorian civil war behind. He studied art at the University of Manitoba and is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions for his painting, including two university gold medals for outstanding achievement in Fine Arts.

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The Blue Boy
"The Blue Boy"

The Card Players
"The Card Players"

Stephane PEDNÒ

Stephane PEDNÒStephane PEDNÒ

PEDNÒ's up-close works in portraiture appropriate the influence of Hollywood glamour and apply it to the traditional portrait. He presents beautiful men and women either in the throes of ecstasy or gazing back at the viewer with sultry stares. These are young, urban partygoers straight from fashion magazines. Lips, eyes and hair are, of course, the focus, as are sunglasses and the play of light on skin, painted eyelids or pouting lips. PEDNÒ does not skimp on the details, and every luscious bit is highlighted. Yet in their transformation from the glossy page to the fine-art canvas, his subjects take on an added allure beyond the trappings of clothing and attitude. PEDNÒ's subjects are familiar to us through pop culture, yet he replaces the superficial qualities of photography and adds the texture of his skilled brushwork, which is both delicate and bold. With our contemporary obsession over physical beauty, these portraits of fantasy subjects speak to our collective wish for a never-ending party and eternal youth.

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Sweet Dreams
"Sweet Dreams"

Indigo
"Indigo"

Tim Stensland

Tim Stensland does not limit himself to one specific medium or style when he creates his art. He feels the piece itself chooses its medium, whether it's a work of social commentary or expressionistic explorations of the creative process. The basis for Tim's highly personal art lies in autobiographical experiences, revelations and insights. His work sheds light on social injustice as well as man's influence, for better or worse, on the world of nature. His powerful portraits of post-Katrina New Orleans are done in a stunningly visceral folk style which speaks to the pathos of human suffering made worse by bureaucratic ineptitude.

He creates his abstract expressionist figurative oil paints by placing black and white paint directly onto the canvas and sculpting it with his fingers. Avoiding brushes, tools, or models when creating these works, gives him an intimate connection with the work and the figure that emerges from the canvas
.  
It is this profound depth and purpose of the creative experience that is revealed in all of Tim Stensland's art.

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Bluesnet
"Bluesnet"

Saxman
"Saxman"

Hanna Vater

Hanna VaterHanna Vater

Hanna Vater is a painter with numerous backgrounds – a native of Latvia, her ancestral culture mixes German and Russian Jewish heritages. She is also in dialogue with art history and the legacy of her travels – she lived in Israel for 13 years before moving to Seattle, Washington. Reflecting her experiences, Vater's still-lives reveal their layers and connections gradually with a muted palette of oil paints whose gentle tones initially suggest watercolors. If the hues evoke Impressionists like Monet, the style of application is surprisingly even, forgoing ridged textures to create flat, diffuse surfaces.

Vater's images and subjects, rather than figuring as tangible items with discernible proportions, become nearly monochrome studies in form and color. She finds architectural details in milk jugs, swaying silhouettes in curved bottles, kindly rounded faces in baskets of fruit. By draining hues, distorting forms and emphasizing light, she engages elemental shapes and gradients. At her canvases' edges, Vater's ultimate fascination with abstract color and form nearly takes over.

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Flowers and Fruits 3
"Flowers and Fruits 3"

Still Life with Lilacs
"Still Life with Lilacs"

Terry Wang

Terry WangTerry Wang

I once was an ink painter, and since then I have always expected myself to infuse the idea of soulfulness, calmness, and clarity, which I found in ink painting, into my oil painting works. I paint as if I had Van Gogh’s calling. I enjoy being in tune to what is in my heart at the moment and defining it. I thrill at connecting with my entire self. This is a significant element of the meaning my work has for me, and the reason art is such an important part of myself and my life.

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Golden Castle
"Golden Castle"

Guge Kingdom, Tibet
"Guge Kingdom, Tibet"

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