This year, Agora Gallery’s annual art competition, juried by the Guggenheim’s venerable Susan Cross, yielded a great diversity of work. Spread across its spaces in both SoHo and Chelsea, the exhibition opens the doors for a select number of artists to exhibit in one of the two seminal New York regions for contemporary art. Agora’s newest space in Chelsea, the art world’s epicenter of late, is a finely renovated space set in the heart of West 25 th Street. Built in the tradition of Chelsea’s industrial-complex-turned-crisp-white-gallery-space, the environment is a perfect context for the forward looking art exhibited by the 2004 contest winners.

From the Chelsea exhibition, Silvia Wille’s arrangement of small brightly colored pieces of plastic set within a grid formation is an interesting take on a classical format. This rethinking of the grid space is an ironic and optic post-consumer-era take on the infiltration of modern detritus into ordered space. Close by is Hiroshi Kumagai’s spirited painting. His illustrative abstraction engages the symbolism of movement. Much like Inka Essenhigh’s bold swirling forms, his work approaches abstraction through representing fantastic affect or motion. Another interesting take on flatness and abstraction is Chris Jordan’s work “Recycling Yard.” His Gursky-like photograph of a recycling yard fills the pictorial space with a consuming visual texture – that of bailed trash. These artists’ works represent an undercurrent of Chelsea’s oeuvre – the precession of concept and sensibility.

In the spirit of SoHo’s rich contemporary art history, Agora’s SoHo branch exhibited work that reflects figurative, expressionistic, or painterly merit. Joy Bertinuson’s stream of conscious painterly image of a studio is a giant size work that embodies the idiosyncrasies of artistic genius. A love of inventive perspectival organization and a lack of inhibition make her work a delightful Matisse-like study of space and objects. Daniel Mena’s work uses the grid space to frame retro advertising iconography. His compulsively organized depictions of kitsch iconography are a look back at the stylization of people and objects through design trends. Artists Seco and Jeong-Eun Shim approach visceral themes through expression and material. Their work, though each quite different in appearance, sounds of earnest poetry and is borne more from affection rather than ironic critique. Joeng-Eun Shim’s work is an exercise in materials and Seco’s is a study in movement and color as it pertains to sound and the body. Both artists twist representation and push their medium to the point of reflecting both the artist’s hand and the depicted subject. These artists’ work embodies the romanticism and classical modernism that is associated with the SoHo’s past and present art scene.