Mishael Coggeshall-Burr | Wilhelm Neusser

April 26 - May 28, 2023

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is proud to present Standing Still, a two-person exhibition featuring the artwork of Mishael Coggeshall-Burr and Wilhelm Neusser. Coggeshall-Burr and Neusser use painterly techniques to capture a strong sense of place and time that tie particularly to memory; memories the artists themselves have connected to these landscapes, and ones they aim to evoke in their viewers. Neusser’s serene evening skies and Coggeshall-Burr’s blurred cityscape compositions present an opportunity to slow down and focus on the here and now.

Mishael Coggeshall-Burr, *Franz-Joseph II*, 2023. Oil on canvas. 30 x 30 in.

Mishael Coggeshall-Burr integrates photography and oil painting to create novel and compelling images on canvas. Taking blurred shots with a 35mm camera, the artist captures memories often collected when he travels. The resulting images offer a distant yet immersive perception of places that are significant to him. The series on view includes imagery from very different stages in his life: Paris, Budapest, and Ukraine. In his Parisian scenes, the attention is on movement: the tension of starting a journey and being seduced by the unknown, by the way our eyes catch light when our bodies explore a new setting. His more recent works draw from his trips to Ukraine during the ongoing conflict with Russia. Coggeshall-Burr has been deeply involved in contributing to refugee aid with his wife Nadya, who started a non-profit in 2022. Offering complex but hopeful images, these layered memories mimic that desire to pause and slow down when the world keeps revolving around you, even when standing still. Coggeshall-Burr’s two most recent works feature the proud Franz Joseph - now “Freedom” bridge; trolley rails and bridge iron glowing a rainbow in the late light, a crisscross of golden clouds, street lamps just about to light. He reflects: “Nadya and I spent a few days exploring Budapest in November before she continued on to Ukraine for her Project Nadiya work, I back to children (and day job). The bridge was near our apartment, an art deco lattice of old cast iron and green paint, in the evenings teenagers collected from nearby universities, snapping selfies and jostling. It’s hard to put it into words, but this bridge felt like a kind of energy center for this area of the city, a magnet for youth, some kind of magic in it.”

Wilhelm Neusser, *Nightglow (2305)*, 2023. Oil on linen. 40 x 36 in.

Wilhelm Neusser is a contemporary painter, known for his strikingly moody landscapes, rich in texture. In his newest series of Starry Nights, Neusser takes a familiar motif often used in his cranberry paintings and recalibrates the technique: paint drips morph from bright red cranberries to bright white stars set against a dark sky. Neusser thinks of this technique as central to his painterly language, and in a recent studio visited noted: “I’m simply using similar words to create different poems.” The technique itself of splattering paint on his finished canvas is somewhat random, an irony in the relationship humans have long had with constellations, their meaning and their seemingly fixed place in relation to the Earth. The serenity of these resulting scenes offers us a chance to stand still under these changing skies. Contrasting the deep blues and purples of the Starry Night series are Neusser’s Marshes, fiery red and orange landscapes that aim to push the romantic landscape towards a somewhat apocalyptic and anxious atmosphere. As with many of his landscapes, they are a memory of place and time - a dramatic scene Neusser recalls from his commute home from Montserrat during a teaching semester. For Neusser, “A landscape painting is a metaphorical space that invites the eye and mind to wander and wonder, and for the viewer to project.”

Building layered compositions, Mishael Coggeshall-Burr’s and Wilhelm Neusser’s paintings draw from memories and feelings summoned by different places and moments in their lives. In Neusser’s worlds, scenes are presented with a meticulous precision, creating a distance from the viewer. As a result, the landscape appears magnified, hyperrealist; like a flashbulb memory that directs the spotlight to reveal what gets our attention over what goes unnoticed. On the contrary, Coggeshall-Burr conceives blurred, vague memories, as if we were seeing them in the process of being forgotten. The resulting artworks immerse the viewer in these places, even when they may be unknown for them. The artists capture the images that lay on our eyelids right before we blink and the dichotomy of feeling all at once distant yet close by. Together, the artists start a dialogue that questions our relationship with landscape and its ability to engage us in a moment of recollection.

Mishael Coggeshall-Burr studied painting at Middlebury College, The Glasgow School of Art, and the Art Students League in New York. His artistic adventures have led him to many countries and continents, including China, Tibet and Nepal, where he garnered images for a show in Kazakhstan; London, UK, where he made his own art and installed a variety of artwork at the Tate Galleries for several years; Mozambique, where he met his amazing yogini wife Nadya; Germany, France, Hong Kong and Macao, as well as Central America and the Caribbean, with many images from his travels featured in his art exhibitions. He lives, works and paints in Montague, MA with his wife and four children.

Wilhelm Neusser was born in Cologne, Germany. From 1997 to 2001 he studied at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe with Professors Gerd van Dülmen und Harald Klingelhöller. He was also a guest student in art history and theory at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe with Professors Hans Belting und Siegfried Gohr. After his studies, Neusser lived and worked in Cologne until his relocation to the United States in 2011. His recent museum exhibitions include the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, 2019), the Fruitlands Museum (Harvard, MA, 2019), and MASS MoCa (North Adams, MA, 2018). In 2020 and 2022 he was honored with a finalist grant in Painting from the Mass Cultural Council. Neusser’s work has been included in notable publications, including The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Artscope Magazine, Boston.com, and Big Red & Shiny. He lives and works in Somerville, MA.

Ukraine: Courage has two colors
Solo Exhibition
October 19 - 30, 2022
Opening Reception with Artist: Saturday, October 22nd from 2:00 - 6:00 PM
Artwork Release Date: October 1, 2022

Half of any proceeds will be donated towards displaced Ukrainians within Ukraine via the nonprofit Project Nadiya.

Earlier this year in May, Mishael Coggeshall-Burr and his wife Nadya Tkachenko traveled to Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia in order to contribute to refugee aid following the Russian invasion a few months prior. Coggeshall-Burr, an artist based in Montague, MA, has an important connection with Ukraine and felt an overwhelming sense of urgency to travel to the country and help. While Nadya grew up in the former soviet republic of Kazakhstan, her father was Ukrainian, born in the countryside North of Kyiv, geographically in the line of the first Russian advance. When she and Mishael first met, they spent time traveling throughout Eurasia, mostly in Ukraine, visiting with friends and relatives in 2002. This travel left a strong impression on Mishael: two of their four children bear Ukrainian names, and he works the memory of these travels into his artistic practice. The recent trip led to a new series of paintings focused on Ukrainian relief efforts.

Mishael Coggeshall-Burr packing summer uniforms, medical supplies, radios and tactical supplies that he and his wife, Nadya Tkachenko, would deliver to contacts in Western Ukraine.

The May trip was the second war effort their family had participated in: In March, while Mishael stayed with their children, Nadya spent two weeks in Przemyśl, a town on the border of Poland and Ukraine, helping translate urgent needs in Ukrainian and Russian at the border crossing, making food at the World Central Kitchen, and finding housing for refugee families. Just before leaving, she set up a crowd-funded campaign that was met with overwhelming support. She used that funding to directly support families both in Poland and Ukraine, and efforts to ferry families to the border from the East through the purchase of a minibus, as well as arranging shipment of a recon drone, medical supplies, body armor, and more. It all finds its way into the paintings. It was then she thought of the idea to start a nonprofit to rebuild housing for Ukrainians in the West of the country, investing in Ukraine itself and providing homes for the millions of internally displaced people. (At last estimate, UNHCR says 7-8 million).

Nadya’s first trip resulted in source photographs of the border crossing and pro-Ukraine rallies in Krakow, as well as plans for a second trip for the couple in May. In his artistic practice, Mishael’s paintings ultimately begin as photographs: this was the first time his source material had come from someone other than himself, and his and Nadya’s journeys inspired this new series focused exclusively on Ukraine.

Nadya Tkachenko at the Ukraine-Poland border in March, helping ferry families to shelters in the *Slava Ukraini* (Glory to Ukraine) Bus.

Reflecting on a Ukrainian sense of place, its rupturing with the loss of peace, and the story of uncounted refugees at an unprecedented historical moment, Mishael’s images traverse a country at a crossroads of great devastation, sadness and brutality, but also filled with the incredible strength, resilience, compassion and humanity that Nadya and Mishael witnessed firsthand. On a deeper level, this series also explores our ability to unite in circumstances of turmoil, how a shared fate has brought out the good in so many people, and the importance of hope. Amazingly, Nadya's name in Ukrainian--Nadiya--means “hope.”

Since her return, Nadya has set up the nonprofit Project NADIYA for rebuilding and renewal of Ukraine, and has so far raised over $150K towards housing in Ukraine.

In May, the couple canceled a long-awaited trip to the South of France and reconfigured flights to head to Ukraine together, bringing with them around 300 lbs of supplies in huge duffel bags, which the airlines checked for free. They spent time in Krakow and Przemyśl, Poland meeting and supporting recent refugees, a day in Lviv, Ukraine photographing and meeting with architects about the designs for housing – capturing around a thousand photographs and making additional drawings. Mishael describes historic monuments covered in sandbags, and stained glass windows hidden by sheet metal in an effort to save them from shrapnel, huge placards and posters everywhere urging смілість (smilist): courage.

Mishael and Nadya dropping off the supplies they hand-carried with a contact in Lviv, Ukraine in May. These supplies were then ferried to the front by early June.

In the southwestern city of Uzhhorod, Nadya met with government officials to discuss refurbishing older buildings into housing, while Mishael drew and photographed the city and its people. The artist also noted that the emotion of the situation was difficult to capture visually alone – trying to find the delicate balance between documenting the situation through photography and respecting the emotional impact of the war on Ukrainians was not easy.

Mishael Coggeshall-Burr, *Close the Sky*, 2022, Oil on canvas, 10 x 8 in., $950

This series of paintings differs from past artworks – instead of recalling pleasant memories of travel, these paintings aim to highlight the war from a perspective many Americans may not have seen yet, and in doing so, Coggeshall-Burr hopes to raise both awareness and funds necessary to aid Ukrainians directly impacted by the war. In a time where we are inundated by news from television and social streams, the purpose of the painting is to allow us to focus on the issue at hand in a slower way, take time to think about it, and contribute to the relief efforts. They aim to more deeply resonate with the viewer in a unique way.

The series will debut at his home gallery in Montague, MA in October 2022 and then the show will travel to Abigail Ogilvy Gallery (Boston, MA) where the artist is represented. In addition to the paintings and drawings on view, Coggeshall-Burr recorded sounds of cities: peace protests in Krakow, people going about their days in Uzhhorod – bringing a further sense of memory and reflection to the body of work.