Login  
Agora Art Gallery – Contemporary Art Dealers

April 18, 2008 - May 8, 2008
Reception: Thursday, April 24, 2008, 6:00pm - 8:00pm

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

Hildebrando de Melo  Savior El Mundo  Suzete Martins  Donna McGee  Raymond Yosuico  Agron Bytyqi  Airco Caravan  
Robert Hilmersson  Christian Martinez  Kerin McBride  Anne Persson Lucenius  Hein van Houten  

Interpretive Realms

Interpretive Realms is a collection of meditative abstract works from artists with unique backgrounds and experiences. The works draw on life experiences, spirituality and nature, rendering the ineffable to explore the mysteries of existence. The sheer variety of style is a testament to the endless possibilities of abstraction, where a color or the quality of a line may traverse cultural boundaries to speak to audiences everywhere.

Hildebrando de Melo

Hildebrando de MeloHildebrando de Melo

From the civil-war-torn country of Angola in West Africa, emerges Hildebrando de Melo(HM), a twenty-nine-year-old artist who has the unique ability to render a painting that is complex in its simplicity.  Restraint dictates his style.  It is this moderation, both in terms of color and line, however, that prolongs the viewer’s attention. 

Even though there are many lines converging within a single work, the plain, oftentimes white, backgrounds provide plenty of open space in Hildebrando de Melo’s paintings.  This paradox means that the paintings have an overall feeling of energetic minimalism.  At the same time, the humanistic affectation of the lines makes them resemble cave drawings or rock engravings.  Each painting features a central “character,” a brown line in the shape of an abstract stick-figure that symbolizes God (Vorax) and dominates the canvas.  All other lines and markings may be more colorful, in bright yellow, orange, or blue, but they act as accents to the larger figure at hand.  As such, Hildebrando de Melo’s paintings are full of animation without overpowering the senses.

click to enlarge

Under Zero
"Under Zero"

Stroctor
"Stroctor"

Savior El Mundo

Savior El MundoSavior El Mundo

Savior El Mundo's works are profoundly moving compositions which envelope the viewer with the very visibility of their formal processes. A fresh update on Jackson Pollock, Mundo's gestural works are infused with pervasive color and gloss, resulting in an incomparable vibrancy and spontaneity. Through layering up to ten compositions upon any given canvas, Mundo achieves a textural complexity which takes time to decipher even as it grips the viewer instantaneously. Behind the dense web of poured and splattered lines this Cherokee Indian/Puerto Rican artist unravels an emotional spindle as dense as his own heritage. His process is rooted in the rituals of Cherokee ceremonies, which he believes help him to bring out "strength and boldness into the scribbles, the lines, the background color, the force of the paint splatters." He transfers the angst of an unresolved adolescence into deeply spiritual works which are bold and self confident, energetic to the point of being riveting.

Born in Harlem, New York, Savior El Mundo has practiced art mediums as diverse as hip hop breakdancing and independent filmmaking. His films have appeared in numerous festival circuits, including showings at the New York Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival. He is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan.

click to enlarge

Tragedy
"Tragedy"

Bizarre
"Bizarre"

Suzete Martins

Suzete MartinsSuzete Martins

From a young age, colors and forms have caught my attention, so I decided to use art as an instrument to register the emotions that I live everyday.  To reach my goal of conveying my emotions in my artwork, I use vibrant colors, different materials and techniques.  Just as the range of my emotions is broad so is the range of materials. I use in my work: fabric, sand, paper, different types of paint, acrylic plaster and seeds.  My technique and materials vary greatly depending upon my mood and the mood of my painting.

click to enlarge

Yunak
"Yunak"

Boundaries II
"Boundaries II"

Donna McGee

Donna McGeeDonna McGee

Donna McGee's cathartic abstracts create a cerebral moodiness, as they undulate in tone and palette to reveal layers of depth and density. Evoking the technique of later-day Gerhard Richter and the color choices of Mark Rothko, the paintings speak in meditative and restrained voices. With subdued hues, McGee creates not merely composition but atmosphere, resonating with evocations even as they lack narrative in their abstraction. McGee's medium-scale abstract works reveal an exploration in compositional qualities as well as a palpable sensitivity to palette.

The intellectual yet profoundly emotive approach to painting emerges from McGee's extensive background in early childhood education in the arts.  She holds a Masters of Education degree from Pennsylvania State University and has written "The Whole Collage, an art book for aesthetic education" and "Creativity and The Child: Training Modules For Teachers". She has also taught at numerous universities, including Pennsylvania State University, George Mason University, and Northampton Community College. In addition to numerous academic awards, Donna McGee has been the recipient of a prize in the 79th Annual International Juried Exhibition, Art Association of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 

click to enlarge

Hidden Value
"Hidden Value"

Cranberry Hill
"Cranberry Hill "

Raymond Yosuico

Raymond YosuicoRaymond Yosuico

Raymond Yosuico’s abstract Expressionist paintings are intensely sensual. Many of his works evoke those from Kandinsky’s Blue Rider period, though Yosuico’s use of both sharp and diffuse borders between neighboring color planes builds on that style’s conventions. Letting certain colors expand throughout the canvas while confining others to their margins, Yosuico teases our desire to read figures and backgrounds into his abstract works.

This technique also allows him to build on the emotive qualities of his colors. In canvases dominated by a relaxing blue or a frenetic yellow, the shape and repetition of color planes can convey, alternatively, movement or static, rhythm or silence.  Through this dynamic interaction between his colors and shapes, Yosuico’s canvases take on a musical dimension that he manipulates effectively from one canvas to the next. Thus, certain works suggest a calm and melodic soundscape, while others are frantically musical. In every case, however, Yosuico’s sense of composition maintains a sense of harmony within each work.

click to enlarge

River's Wish
"River's Wish"

God Spoke
"God Spoke"


Modern Incarnations

Modern Incarnations is a dynamic group of artists that possess the exciting, creative energy of the past, where everything was new and the possibilities seemed endless. These artists present unique perspectives on our modern sensibilities, from personal relationships to consumer culture. Whether inwardly searching or presenting social commentary the paintings in Modern Incarnations will generate stimulating dialogue between audience and artwork.

Agron Bytyqi

Agron BytyqiAgron Bytyqi

Agron Bytyqi’s surrealist oils on canvas present imagined dreamscapes rich with a deeply personal visual symbolism.  Bytyqi’s brilliantly hued paintings, rendered with an exacting, photographic clarity, express allegories of his own biographical and national histories.  Powerfully evocative in their raw emotional content, vividly dreamlike color, and bizarre thematic components, each painting serves as an archive of Bytyqi’s complicated and traumatic experiences as a citizen of the once war-torn Eastern European nation, Kosovo.  Although the content of his works is inextricably linked to the horrors he witnessed both as a soldier and as a civilian in his homeland, Bytyqi ultimately hopes that his profound love for art and commitment and sincerity for his craft will characterize it in the broader spectrum.

Having exhibited widely throughout Kosovo, Agron Bytyqi is a well respected artist and academic.  Currently, Bytyqi works as a professor at the University of Art in Prishtina and holds a Masters of Fine Art.

click to enlarge

Silent Symbole
"Silent Symbole"

The Eye
"The Eye"

Airco Caravan

Airco CaravanAirco Caravan

Like a contemporary Andy Warhol, Airco Caravan creates nu-pop art that is iconic yet satirical. The mixed-media works are cunningly deceptive as they toy with opposing concepts. Caravan manipulates viewers’ emotions by playing with color. Working with flat pantones unobstructed by shadows, the Dutch artist’s signature colors are Miami Beach hues of pink and turquoise. If palette were the absolute indicator of mood, hers is decidedly cheery.

Subtle details in the seemingly harmless imagery reveal that Caravan’s works are not as cute as one might think, though. Working with mixed media, Caravan layers her work with hidden meaning. The paint for an otherwise friendly portrait is thinly applied so that subversive imagery peaks out from beneath the surface. Skulls and ubiquitous company logos repeatedly appear in borders and patterns not necessarily obvious at first glance.
Overwhelmingly, the works deal with death and pop culture. Airco Caravan’s art is a reflection of our complex world, in which dualities struggle for expression.

click to enlarge

Swim Katrina
"Swim Katrina"

Silly Bones
"Silly Bones"

Robert Hilmersson

Robert HilmerssonRobert Hilmersson

The mixed media collages of Robert Hilmersson evoke a storehouse of aesthetic precedents from the pop art of the 1980’s, to contemporary work in new media and graphic design.  They immediately call to mind the consumer culture they often represent with the oversaturated palette of advertising and the excess of images that mark contemporary existence. While remaining inside a long tradition of montage, these works reject the exaggerated two dimensionality of their forbears in favor of a more painterly use of plane; emphasizing certain objects, dismissing others. The subjects, however classically placed, are radically distinct from academic traditions in their form, fragments of bodies, logos, the ephemera of everyday life.  

These surprising juxtapositions may be attributed in part to the artist’s extensive travels and his relationship to largely American iconography as an artist living and working in Sweden.   This oblique stance vis a vis the media images to which Americans are habituated, has lent to his works a critical originality that reinvigorates and reorients these over-produced mediums and through them creates new messages. 

click to enlarge

Sorry Gone Shopping
"Sorry Gone Shopping"

Love Heart
"Love Heart"


Subjective Realities

Presenting disparate styles of art together reminds us that great artists tap into their individuality to produce a plastic representation of their inner visions and rhythms. Agora Gallery’s Subjective Realities includes whimsical characters and soulful landscapes and still-lifes, making us laugh while reminding us of the oft-overlooked beauty still contained within our modern world.

Christian Martinez

Christian MartinezChristian Martinez

Christian Martinez welcomes the viewer into his paintings with a adroit use of perspectival recession, beckoning us to step onto the freshly rained upon streets of his youth in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
With the agility of a George Seurat, he bathes memories of his adolescents in a palette of indigoes and sapphires to evoke an unmistakable longing and nostalgia. Martinez' artworks reflect his country's landscape, as well as the modern urban life wherein the human subject is immersed. Centering on subjects which reflect not only his own yearnings but also those of the people closest to him, he strives to paint the pictures that will elicit that look of shared longing in his viewer's eyes. "His works display wet areas after a rain fall, the reflection of lights on the roads, areas with nightfall, others during the day, the architecture, trees, and the shadow they produce to create an atmosphere seen in any city [in the world]."

A graduate of Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico, Martinez is now a Professor in Drawing and Painting classes at the same university.

click to enlarge

A Night in New York City
"A Night in New York City"

The Small Dock in Sound View, Bx
"The Small Dock in Sound View, Bx"

Kerin McBride

Kerin McBrideKerin McBride

Kerin McBride combines vibrant colors with palpable textures to create evocative paintings that draw the viewer in with their approachable subject matter.  Concentrating primarily on landscapes, McBride crafts her emotionally rich paintings by abstracting subjects to their basic forms and rendering them in brilliant, unnatural colors.  Through this process, the artist encourages viewers to look at the world around them with fresh eyes, recognizing nature's solitude, mystery, and community.  A strong believer in the uplifting power of art, the artist strives to imbue her paintings with a sense of tranquility and calm, leaving with viewer hopeful and optimistic.

Although the artist has long considered herself to be a perpetual student, Kerin McBride holds a Bachelor Fine Arts from Mary Baldwin College, a Certificate in Painting and Drawing from the prestigious Corcoran School of Art and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in art at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University).  The artist resides in Northern Virginia and exhibits her work in galleries nation wide.

click to enlarge

Black Flowers with Green
"Black Flowers with Green"

Gold with Red Geometric Shapes
"Gold with Red Geometric Shapes"

Anne Persson Lucenius

From the expletive rich conversation between lovers to glamour girls daring the viewer to make their day, the statements that Anne Persson Lucenius’ makes with her paintings are even bolder than her use of color. Employing a dynamic, pop art style, her work is an intriguing exploration of gender roles, relationship and other social issues. Lucenius’ fascination with films from the 1940s and 1950s is manifested in her vibrant illustrations of glamorous leading ladies and the men in their lives. Using speech balloons to facilitate commentary, her subjects make comical, poignant and even coarse statements to incite dialog on social roles and dynamics.

Anne Persson Lucenius has studied graphic design, illustration and fine art. She currently resides in Sweden and was honored by the Association of Finnish Artists with the Artist of the Year award in 2007. Her work has been exhibited throughout Sweden and she is a member of the Swedish Artist Society.

click to enlarge

We Belong Together
"We Belong Together"

Hasta La Vista Baby
"Hasta La Vista Baby"

Hein van Houten

The Dutch painter Hein used to give away his paintings to pay his bills after the company he worked for went bankrupt. This sense of impulsive survival skills in the midst of turmoil pervades his work--the quickness, the raw energy, the doing whatever it takes to keep above the chaos. There's no time for contemplation in Hein's work; the spontaneity of urban street art flings itself onto the canvas. His subject matter, the rough and tumble of nightlife, social injustice, sex, violence, are all displayed in a style that is a mix of graffiti, doodle and caricature. His figures are vivid bursts of color reined in by thin black or white lines, but the boundaries want to bleed, and his subjects are eager to convulse into exuberant bundles of line and color, as if halted in motion by a momentary burst of paint. Inspired both by the contemporary tools of spray paint and the action painting of Jackson Pollock, Hein composes his works with his canvas on the floor. He circles the work as it takes shape, his quick motions attempts to bypass censoring thoughts, to let the body do the work without the mind interfering.

Like action painting, Hein's works are defined as much by their colors and composition as they are by the fleeting time in which they are created. He forces urban expression and gallery art together with humor, passion, and a demand for respect.

click to enlarge

Married and Wild in the Streets
"Married and Wild in the Streets"

A Bang to the Head Brings Miracles
"A Bang to the Head Brings Miracles"

Home | Current Exhibition | Annual Exhibitions | Gallery Representation | Show your Art in NYC | Art Competition
Calendar | Links | ARTisSpectrum | Agora Gallery Blog | Agora Gallery Facebook Page | Agora Gallery Twitter Feed
Privacy Policy | Support

Copyright & Disclaimer
© 1984-2010 Agora Gallery, All Rights Reserved