Press Release: The Sixth Season

Wilhelm Neusser
October 14 - December 13, 2020
460C Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition by Boston-based painter Wilhelm Neusser. In this newest body of work, a thicket of forsythia or a chain link fence create a space just out of reach, suggesting a longing for an indeterminate place or time. The show’s title, The Sixth Season, refers to a mysterious missing panel in a series by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Like the work of this 16th century forerunner, Neusser’s paintings invite speculation. What or which time is lost? The Sixth Season contrasts our nature as social beings with the experience of a season lost, the pandemic spring of 2020.

Wilhelm Neusser, Downhill (#2023), 2020, Oil on linen, 48 x 40 in., Photo credit: Julia Featheringill Photography

Neusser’s latest paintings evoke a sense of isolation akin to his well-known cranberry bog series. Only this time, instead of distant figures, subtle details in the landscape elicit powerful emotions: a glinting sunspot off a chain link fence, a spontaneous splattering of forsythia that stands in stark contrast to the hazy background. Previous works like Neusser’s “Fruitlands/Interchange” bring to mind old masterful depictions of nature like Thomas Cole’s “View from Mount Holyoke.” In his new paintings, Neusser builds further on this theme, fluidly integrating the manmade and the natural world. In doing so, the artist invites a multisensory experience. Surrounded by the pollen haze of the flowers that symbolize the start of spring, the viewer relives a change of the season experienced by all of us so differently this year.

In light of the current pandemic and the political state of the country, we long for the days of the past and a return to a sense of normalcy. But what is it exactly that we long to return to? The “new normal” is left to each of us to contemplate and to define. Neusser’s paintings pay homage to isolation, to the loneliness that socially and physically distances us from the world. But the works do not stop there. Instead they add a shock of bright yellow or a playfully stripped piece of fabric to show us that there can be beauty even in times of darkness. Do these colors reflect a brighter, more equitable future? Neusser’s work allows us to reflect on this past year and move forward with strength amidst uncertainty. 

Wilhelm Neusser, Picnic (#2026), 2020, Oil on linen, 48 x 40 in., Photo credit: Julia Featheringill Photography

Wilhelm Neusser’s artwork has been widely exhibited and he has received numerous awards and fellowships. His recent museum exhibitions include the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, 2019), the Fruitlands Museum (Harvard, MA, 2019), and MASS MoCa (North Adams, MA, 2018). In 2020 he was honored with a finalist grant in Painting from the Mass Cultural Council. Additional awards and recognition include the MASS MoCA Studio Program (2017), Vermont Studio Center (2013), Finalist, Wilhelm-Morgner-Prize, Soest (2010), International Artist in Residence, Boots Contemporary Art Space (St. Louis, MO, 2009), ZVAB Phönix Art Prize (2007). Neusser’s work has been included in notable publications, including The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Artscope Magazine, Boston.com, and Big Red & Shiny.

Wilhelm Neusser was born in Cologne, Germany. He relocated to the United States in 2011, and currently lives and works in Somerville, MA.

Wilhelm Neusser, Bright Horizon (#2001), 2020, Oil on linen, 47.2 x 39.4 in, Photo credit: Julia Featheringill Photography

A Busy Fall in SoWa

With new neighbors, pop-up exhibitions and the return of the Open Market on Sundays, this fall will hopefully feel like a gradual return to normalcy with galleries, artists and shops following close safety precautions. We are so excited with everything happening in our local arts community, and wanted to share a list of some of the new spaces in SoWa you can now visit:

New Gallery: LaiSun Keane

Located just across the hallway from Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, LaiSun Keane is a contemporary art gallery championing emerging artists, women, minorities and the overlooked. The gallery was born in the COVID-19 pandemic so it has a strong focus on producing online content and new ways of art presentation and art sales.

Abigail Ogilvy: What drew you to SoWA?

Image courtesy of LaiSun Keane

LaiSun Keane: I wanted to be a city rather than a suburban gallery. Besides its city location, SoWa offers a conducive environment for both art galleries, artists and art lovers as it is geared for art and culture. Its eco system is built on art, evidence in its monthly First Friday event, convergence of galleries and artists in this space and frankly very reasonable rent. 

AO: Do you have any upcoming exhibitions? If so, what do they look like?

LK: For the rest of 2020, I have three exhibitions lined up:

  1. Christina Erives: con o sin cebollas / with or without onions, Sep 10 - Oct 3

  2. Nicki Green: Between Washing And Unwithering, Oct 8 - Nov 7

  3. Four Japanese Women Artists: New Directions, Nov 14 - Dec 12

These three exhibitions are of 3D medium with very diverse subject matters. Erives’ show is about the ritual of sharing meals and the concept of contemporary womanhood. Green, a trans woman investigates her gender in relation to the Jewish ritual of Mikveh and the final show of the year is a group show of four Japanese female artists working in contemporary ceramics.

AO: Tell me a bit more about your background, what was your journey towards being a gallerist like?

LK: I graduated from UNSW Art and Design with a Bachelor of Art Theory in 2009 after spending some years before that raising children. 

It has always been my dream to open an art gallery. My time at art school and my subsequent volunteering at art non-profit and working for commercial art galleries informed my decision as a gallery, to champion emerging artists, women and minorities. 

When I moved to Boston in 2013, I worked for free for many non-profits such as Concord Art, Boston Jewish Film Festival, Boston Asian American Film Festivals, Independent Film Festival and ReelAbilities. In 2015, I started volunteering at Lacoste Gallery in Concord where I learned a lot about ceramic art and became a staff member in 2017. In 2018, I became the Co-Owner and the gallery changed its name to Lacoste Keane Gallery. I departed April 2020 and formed LaiSun Keane at the height of the pandemic. I would like to say that my journey has been filled with many many valuable experiences which I use in my everyday life as a gallerist.

Pop - Ups

Kim Smith - Space Between Edges

AO: Are you a Boston-based artist? If so, what drew you here?

KS: I am a Boston based artist, and have had a studio in the South End for about 5 years. I moved to Boston from New York to take an artist position at the MIT Media Lab. I was drawn to working at MIT because I have always been interested in science and technology, and specifically the ways in which it influences the creative process and our view of the world.

AO: Can you speak a bit about your current exhibition, Space Between Edges?

Image courtesy of Kim Smith

KS: This exhibit brings together several threads that I have been working on for a long while, that have really culminated these past few months. The exhibition features several recent paintings and sculptures with three new performance pieces. The performances unspool at three time scales: a video recording of performances of the recent past, a live performance in the present, and a slowly evolving performance that plays out through the duration of the show.

AO: As the artist, do you think the gallery space impacts the way your work speaks to an audience? How were you able to use the space to your advantage?

KS: The gallery space has been really useful for me to see the work in a fresh context, and establish a dialogue among the pieces. The gallery allows for a clear way of curating a narrative, one that can often get lost in the chaos of the studio space. And to share that with others is really the ultimate goal, and so as we begin to venture out of isolation, we are reminded how integral art is to our lives, and experiencing it is an important part of connecting. The process of pulling a show together is a very useful way of looking and allowing for contemplation. The past few months have been really creatively productive, and directing that energy into a single focal point is a useful tool for reflection as well as moving forward. 

Kim Smith will be located in gallery C9 until September 20th.

House of Venus - The Color of Fruition

Image courtesy of Kaylee Hennessey

AO: How did HOV evolve, and what is your mission? How do you see this space affecting that mission?

HOV: Our practice as a gallery is to get young and emerging artists to show their work in a professional manner, but in an avant-garde and untraditional way. We believe that galleries can extend further than white-wall spaces, and the domesticity of House of Venus can bring an entirely different crowd of artists together. We show work for the purpose of the celebration of art and the people that it brings together. With our new pop-up in SOWA, House of Venus has extended from our one-bedroom split to a formal gallery setting, however we are still going to bring our spark of fun to the space by creating more of an experience with not only the art, but the space and the people in it. We strive to make exhibiting art more accessible for emerging artists and creating an environment for all to enjoy it, and we are incredibly excited for this huge next step.

AO: Can you speak a bit about your exhibition?

HOV: Since the beginning, our dream was to bring emerging artists to the public eye, to be a method of representation and to guide these artists from exhibiting solely in academic spaces to exhibiting in the “real world.” We selected works for this exhibition that would engage the space from a roster of artists we had either worked with before or known personally. The bright use of color by many of these artists inspired the title, The Color of Fruition. The work as presented in this gallery is exactly what our dream had always looked like to us, an idea that has finally come to fruition.

House of Venus will be located in gallery C9 from September 25th through mid October.

Brian Murphy - Go Ask Alice

Artist Brian Murphy of Totally Wired Sculpture will be hosting a pop-up exhibition titled Go Ask Alice, which will explore the Adventures of Alice as she negotiates the challenges of our current not quite Wonderland. Brian will be in the space during the following dates and times:

Sunday September 20 from 11-4
Sunday September 27 from 11-4
Friday October 2,  from 3-8
Sunday October 4 from 11-4

“A self taught artist I started Totally Wired Sculpture in 2002 and I have gradually spent more time in the creative process, which seems to be a nice balance to my work as a child therapist primarily dealing with issues of trauma. My work can be seen as lighthearted line drawings in the medium of steel wire. Often political and humorous themes are incorporated which can challenge or amuse the viewer leaving them uplifted. The goal of each piece is to create kinetic movement from the tension in the wire so that the figures seem to dance or sway on their own and appear enlivened. Mythological themes and tales of transformation dominate illustrating the power of art to help us change and grow.”

Image courtesy of Brian Murphy

Array Contemporary

AO: Can you speak a bit about your current exhibition?

AC: Your timing is excellent as we have an exciting show called 'AC 5'. Five artists [Steve Bennett, Steven Edson, Joanne Tarlin, Marsha Nouritza Odabashian, and Jennifer Jean Okumura] explore their five senses to create moments delivered through time—historical moments, ours, or others’ epic stories, along with hands-on experiments exploring the mystery of the mind and body. Andrew Harvey may have said it best: “If you’re really listening, if you’re awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold evermore wonders.” ‘AC 5’ is mysterious, unsee—it is a force of nature, a master of the dark and light and all in-between. Come explore this group exhibition of 2D works that give you a glimpse into the artists’ minds—their desires and cravings.

Photograph by Steven Edson

AO: How did Array Contemporary come to be? What was that process like?

AC: Array Contemporary was formed in the Summer of 2020 to primarily create a virtual on-line gallery in which to show their member’s artistic and creative work while promoting the members' work to curators, museums, collectors, and the general public. Basically, we provide our stable of artists and the public an assortment of opportunities to engage with art and the creative process of making, viewing, and collecting art. AC accomplishes this by promoting thru our website, pop-up gallery shows, and other artistic and entrepreneurship opportunities that complement the goals and objectives of its Artists'. 

The process has been thrilling. All the emotions and day to day adventures of finding the perfect piece for your home or office is the best way to describe the experience so far. We are all art administrators and practicing artists, so the bumps and successes are part of this ride. 

Array Contemporary is located in gallery C6.



Press Release: Tidal Flexing

Amanda Wachob: Tidal Flexing
August 28 – October 11, 2020
460C Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA

Click for available artwork

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is proud to announce Tidal Flexing, our first solo presentation of Amanda Wachob’s artwork. A true innovator in her field, Wachob has become internationally known for redefining the fine art of tattooing. Her recent body of works on canvas are created by using tattoo ink and a surrealistic technique called Decalcomania.  It is also the process used in preparing "marbled" tattoos. The final impressions are printed digitally onto temporary tattoo paper, and then applied to canvas instead of skin. The tattoo ink creates an abstract visual ebb and flow, combining neon colors with dark hues and areas of intentionally exposed canvas. The resulting organic shapes are reminiscent of an extraterrestrial shoreline that calls attention to the artist’s process. In addition to the artworks on canvas, Tidal Flexing introduces Wachob’s first limited-edition print on silk.

Jupiter's moon Europa is one of the only celestial bodies in our solar system besides Earth that is said to hold the potential for life. Its surface is wrapped with lines, striated with cracks, and fractured with beautiful patterns due to the process of tidal flexing, or the continuous stretching and heating of its icy layer caused by the shape of its orbit around Jupiter.

The inspiration for this body of work, Amanda Wachob writes, “Sometimes, we rotate around one another like moons or satellites.  With a gravitational pull of sorts, sometimes with an unexplainable magnetism.  Our orbits around one another can be imperfect, off-balance or elliptical, and we can experience stress, friction and fractures.  It is this pushing and pulling and stretching of one another though, that can break us open and be the catalyst to create the conditions for new life.”

Amanda Wachob, Possible Blueprint, Tattoo ink and temporary tattoo paper on canvas, 48 x 36 in., 2020

Amanda Wachob is a New York City-based artist who is internationally known for her innovative and conceptual work with the tattoo medium.  Her canvases include fruit, leather, linen, and skin.  She has done projects with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and The Whitney.  Pioneering the watercolor tattoo movement and actively bridging the gap between tattooing and fine art, she has been named one of the 50 most creative people in the world by AdAge.  She has exhibited her work in galleries and museums worldwide.

Press Release: Oh To Be a Painting

Curated by Katelyn Ledford
August 10 – September 13, 2020
Online Exclusive

Available artwork: https://bit.ly/2XCeXNi

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is proud to present Oh To Be a Painting, featuring the artwork of Hangama Amiri, Destiny Belgrave, Sean Downey, Ada Goldfeld, David Heo, Nicolas Holiber, Joshua Jefferson, Erin Loree, Sean McGaughey, Kiernan Pazdar, Madeline Peckenpaugh, and Samual Weinberg. Our third online-exclusive exhibition, guest curated by Katelyn Ledford.

From the curator, Katelyn Ledford:

We didn’t need a pandemic to make us realize we view a great deal of art online. While the accessibility in doing so is extremely important and necessary, painters are constantly wondering, “Is it enough to view my work only online?”

Oh To Be a Painting addresses this question through 12 artists whose work begs the viewer to touch and feel them through the screen. Each artist’s unique handling of materials instills a longing to see them in person instead of zooming in on a compressed JPG. Subject matter and themes vary from portraiture to improvisation yet all offer a juiciness for the eye to feast upon. While these paintings exist strikingly as flattened images, they lose an integral part of being a painting, the ability to immerse the viewer. Artists are supreme adapters, ever evolving with their circumstances, but how do painters adapt their work to a virtual art world (or even should they)? I, as a painter, do not know. However, I do know that I wish I could see these paintings in person.

About the artists:

Hangama Amiri, as an Afghan refugee woman, produces textile works that evoke her personal diaspora as a means to investigate the politics of gender in Islamic culture, while also celebrating feminine subjects that have been deemed taboo. Her work begins by culling fabrics from stores in New York, which are imported from markets in India and bazaars in Afghanistan. She then cuts and stitches together various textiles, fabrics, and clothing into visually seductive compositions as a way of celebrating Afghan women’s feminism and identities in visual art. The act of sewing these different sources together in her work becomes a metaphor for uniting fragmented identities that have had to live in multiple geographies around the world. In these fabric installations, Amiri chooses to not only forefront women-dominated spaces, such as beauty parlors, but also subversive depictions of items banned by the Taliban, such as red lipstick, shiny fabrics, and nail polish. The artist uses these symbols to give Afghan women a sense of freedom and power in their own sensuality, sexuality, desire, and pleasure; this is in contrast to the Islamic norms of women’s bodies being something very private, secret, and hidden behind a veil.             

Hangama Amiri, Zhvandun (Life), 2019. Chiffon, cotton, silk, silk-screen fabric, white belting, lace, and found fabric. 146’ (H) x 124’ (W) in.

Hangama Amiri (b. 1989 Peshawar, Pakistan) received her BFA (Major in Fine Arts) from NSCAD University in Halifax NS (2012) and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT (2020). She was a Canadian Fulbright and Post-Graduate Fellow at Yale University School of Art and Sciences in New Haven, CT (2015-2016). She has exhibited her paintings nationally and internationally, recently in New York, Toronto, France, Italy, London (UK), and Sofia, Bulgaria. She won the 2003 Portia White Protégé Award, and in 2015, her painting Island of Dreams won a runner-up honorable mention at RBC Canadian Painting Competition.                         

Destiny Belgrave, Daddy In The Wicker, 2020. Papercuts, Gouache, Watercolor, Glitter. 14 x 11 in.

Destiny Belgrave was born and raised in Brooklyn NY and nurtured, with a Caribbean and African American upbringing. Currently she is based out of Queens, NY where she lives and works. She graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2018 with a BFA. She is a current fellow of the A.I.R Fellowship Program and a current resident of the BRIC workspace Studio Residency and the BRIClab Residency. Belgrave was also a recent breakout star at SPRING/BREAK art show in NY, where she showed a solo show of recent works. Her work upholds and uplifts Blackness, family, and culture, along with domestic and familial activities, spaces, and objects. The works are often mixed media pieces but they almost always use papercuts as the primary medium.

Sean Downey, No Place That Does Not See You, 2020. Oil on panel. 14 x 11 in.

Sean Downey’s work considers our relationship to screens, and the screen’s relationship to, and origins in, painting. Images have always been, in part, an attempt to crush space and time and to lure viewers into an Orphic journey, or down a click hole. Much of the artist’s recent work is sourced from spaces built in virtual reality. He collages disparate forms, subjects, and images and then processes these sources through a very handmade approach to painting. VR spaces are treated as a still life or landscape that can be returned to repeatedly throughout the process, adjusted, and mined for visual information to serve the needs of the analog painting process. The confusion and distortion of source imagery has also become a way to keep his approach and response hovering in an abstract space even as the images remain for the most part recognizable. This in-between state seems to mirror Downey’s own experience, as a consciousness attempting to sift through and make sense out of a nonstop onslaught of thoughts, memories, and experiences.

Sean Downey received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from Boston University. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston, MA) and LaMontagne Gallery (Boston, MA), and has been included in recent group exhibitions at Richard Heller Gallery (Santa Monica, CA), the Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA (Portland, ME), the Leroy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University (New York, NY), LaMontagne Gallery (Boston, MA), and Park Place Gallery (Brooklyn, NY). Downey is a founding member of the curatorial collaborative kijidome, winner of the 2015 James and Audrey Foster Prize from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. His work has been profiled in recent editions of Art Maze Magazine, New American Paintings, Maake Magazine, and the I Like Your Work Podcast. He currently lives and works in Fairfield, IA, where he is an Associate Professor of Art at Maharishi International University.                                                       

Ada Goldfeld, Quarantine Chair, 2020. Colored pencil on paper. 14 x 17 in.

Ada Goldfeld’s work explores quiet, everyday moments that are emotionally and often politically charged. In her studio, she spends time with the objects, people, and spaces she paints, discovering the textures, patterns, and atmospheric conditions that point to the underlying significance of the subject matter. Through this careful observation, she aims to make paintings that sting you with believability, as if to declare: this is what this experience was like, and now you have no choice but to see it. Now you have no choice but to feel it.             

Most recently, Goldfeld has considered how the pandemic has reshaped her life in New York City. While quarantined in a cramped studio apartment, she has faced a stillness that she notes “is foreign to me.”  Goldfeld has watched as chairs remain untouched for weeks, shirts accumulate dust, and magnets slip off her mini-fridge. One day bleeds into the next, each steeped with a sense of helplessness. Through drawing, the artist has recorded this passage of time.                                                                     

Ada Goldfeld currently lives and works in New York City. She graduated from the dual-degree program between the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, receiving a BFA in studio art and a BA in art history and religion. In 2018, she completed an MFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. Alongside her studio practice, Goldfeld is an avid teacher, instructing college and extracurricular art classes in the tri-state area.

David Heo, Exerting Agency, 2020. Construction paper, charcoal, crayon, colored pencil, acrylic gouache and painted paper cutouts on paper. 12 x 9 in.

David Heo’s artwork Exerting Agency was made to present a toxic dynamic he had recently witnessed. “It's unfortunate because it's this awful power dynamic that keeps perpetuating over and over again. I know everyone knows what I'm referring to. We've all experienced this unaddressed imbalance at some point, whether it's an intimate moment, a group hang, or within a professional platform. I hate seeing this. NOBODY should feel like they can't exert their agency because of the fear, anxiety, or consequences that quietly looms.”

David Heo (B. 1992, Georgia) is a Chicago-based artist. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In recent works, Heo commonly utilizes history, to illustrate a range of folklore from grand, mythic metanarratives to quiet frames of daily life. Heo renders the traditional into the contemporary as he processes his personal experiences at the moment. By using the symbology classic to historical paintings and illustrations of mythology and folklore—the horse, the tiger, the dog—Heo typologies the people he meets and interactions during nights out. Heo’s work has been exhibited internationally and featured in various publications.

Erin Loree, Tropics, 2020. Oil on panel. 20 x 16 in.

Through painting, Erin Loree explores themes of transformation, inversion, and duality, with an emphasis on the process as a journey of discovery. She works without references or a plan and engages in a dialogue with the work, allowing each mark to reveal the next while flirting with the edges of abstraction and representation. Working wet-into-wet, the artist builds up thick sections of paint using a variety of conventional and unconventional tools, and then removes and reapplies the material to create richly-layered surfaces that evoke emotional states and psychic spaces.

“My process a material and symbolic renewal of matter, form, energy, and meaning. I allow the work to continuously changes states as globs of paint move around the surface, dragging, shifting, and relocating, in search of their final destination. The images appear to have lived before settling down, unfolding out of themselves, in accordance to their own inner logic. The work does not follow prescribed formulae of conventional painting, but instead continuously tests and expands the possibilities by which a painting can occur and be experienced.

Drawing inspiration from the cycles of birth, death, growth and decay in natural world, my work reflects the notion that everything outside of us and within us is in a constant state of becoming and transitioning. Forms appear melt and morph into one another, making it difficult to tell where one ends, and another begins. The movements are cyclical, and the images, regenerative. Each painting conveys a vivid expression of energy and motion captured in time, where radiant light seems to emerge from within.”

Toronto-based artist Erin Loree received a BFA from OCAD University in 2012 and a Certificate of Advanced Visual Studies from OCAD’s Florence Program. She was awarded the 2012 Medal for Drawing and Painting upon graduating from the OCAD, as well as the Nora E. Vaughan Award, and an Ontario Arts Council grant. She has participated in numerous group shows including Kim Dorland-curated I ♥ Paint 2 at Angell Gallery in Toronto, Younger Than George: 12 Painters in their 20s and 30s at George Lawson Gallery in San Francisco, and ‘O Canada’ at Beers in London, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include a museum exhibition at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound, Ontario, Forth and Back at Peter Robertson Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta, and Snakes and Ladders at Angell Gallery in Toronto. In the fall of 2016, she completed the Bill and Isabel Pope Residency in painting at NSCAD University in Halifax. Other residencies include Artscape Youngplace in Toronto and Sachaqa Centro de Arte in the Peruvian Amazon Jungle. Loree's work has been featured in MOMUS, the Toronto Star, CBC Arts, Beautiful Decay and the Huffington Post. She is represented by Peter Robertson Gallery in Edmonton, Canada.


Joshua Jefferson, Portrait of Sylvia Von Harden, 2020. Acrylic and flashe on canvas. 26.5 x 22 in.

Josh Jefferson has made visual art seriously since the late 1990’s with a singular drive that combines material experimentation and visual simplicity, comics, collage and a fetish for the lush verso of antiquated source material; a tactile, albeit intellectual result of his fondness for the past. He is as unafraid of forging a face from 3 strokes of brush, pen and ink splatter as he is of layering a dozen disparately drawn discards into a harmonious whole. Jefferson doesn’t seem to concern himself with end results, but the laboratory’s immediacy is his prevailing enchantment. He makes marks with learned abandon; he erases them with naiveté and concision. His practical approach is alternately reverent and iconoclastic, whether rubbing frottage over vinyl lettering, painting with a broad brush or concentrated draftsmanship, his work is a celebration of abandon and control.” --Scott Zieher

Joshua Jefferson has been the focus of numerous articles, including a full feature in the April 2016 issue of Juxtapoz. This year he received the highest level of Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in Painting. Recent exhibitions include one-man shows at Zevitas Marcus in Los Angeles, Gallery 16 in San Francisco, and TURN Gallery in New York City, as well as group exhibitions at Zieher Smith in New York City and Zevitas Marcus in Los Angeles.

Sean McGaughey, Group Hug with My Multiple Personalities, 2019. Oil on canvas. 36 x 30 in.

Sean P McGaughey’s paintings are indebted to the history of painting and pull from the vast history of image culture. His canvases built from a repetition of lines and forms pushing, pulling and confronting each other, while his sense of color works to subvert the action. A narrative built up from the action of lines and forms begin to dissolve, opening up a subconscious space for the viewer to insert themselves.            

Sean P McGaughey current lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Kiernan Pazdar, Dark Place, 2020. Oil on canvas. 16 x 12 in.

Kiernan Pazdar made the painting Dark Place while mercury was in retrograde, the United States was amidst a global pandemic, and protestors took to the streets to work to eradicate racial injustice.  No tiny samples from makeup companies, joints, alcohol, or clothing could help achieve equality and yet July’s SALE SALE SALE emails and flashing liquor store signs continued to promise help. Pazdar exists in a reality that is fraught with contradictions and cruel optimism. In her series Smoke and Mirrors, the artist has been using paint as a tool to help examine the tension produced by postfeminist aesthetics and neoliberalism in the United States. She is interested in common ways of coping with the anxiety of an American Dream which feels increasingly unsatisfying and impossible. 

“My time working as a textile designer in my early Twenties informs everything that I do. I look for hegemonic desires in imagery found in lifestyle magazines, Pinterest, in television. Historical and trendy textiles to help bring symbolism into the work. Like the Pictures Generation and Pop Artists, I am continually thinking about the ways our ideas of normalcy are manufactured and disseminated.”

Kiernan Pazdar (b.1992, Glastonbury, CT) lives in Providence, RI and works in Warren, RI. Her work has been exhibited with the 1969 Gallery, New York, NY; Field Projects, New York, NY; The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; NHAI Sharon Art Center, Peterborough, NH; The Atwater Gallery, Kingston, NY ;The RISD Museum, Providence, RI; and Woods Gerry Gallery, Providence, RI. Her work is also included in the perma- nent collection of the Rhode Island School Of Design Museum and the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Pazdar earned her BFA in Textile Design from the Rhode Island School Of Design in 2014, and received her MFA in Painting at the same institution in 2020.

Madeline Peckenpaugh’s paintings mimic interconnected patterns, light, atmosphere, and pressure found in natural and urban environments. Peckenpaugh explores these formal elements through her photography practice, which she sees as a cataloging of events or situations that she can draw upon. “The matter of factness of my photographs and their peculiarity in relation to their subject sets up an obstacle for me to work through in my paintings. Through the process of painting, I transform these cropped realities into their own particular environments. I am interested in collapsing space as well as opening up deep dimensional sections; disrupting with gesture and weaving in material changes to dodge initial expectations.”

Madeline Peckenpaugh, Testing Sounds, 2020. Acrylic and pastel on paper. 23 x 22.5 in.

Madeline Peckenpaugh received an MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She has recently exhibited at 1969 Gallery (NYC), Avery Galleries (PA), Woods Gerry Gallery (RI), and Palace of Fine Arts (CA). Her artworks is held in notable public collections, including Brown University, Woodmere Art Museum, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Her work was featured in Create! Magazine in 2020.

Samual Weinberg, Meat Balance. 2018. Graphite on assembled paper. 24 x 22 in.

Samual Weinberg’s series of paintings feature a series of variations on a single recurring character called the Pink Man/ Pink Men. They are cartoonishly rendered fleshy beings that are wide-eyed, like children, seemingly amazed by whatever befalls them; mischievously engaging in any number of contests, past-times and interactions that draw equally from art historical, television, and film references. The Pink Men’s stories are often influenced by archetypal sources, from school-age juvenile delinquency narratives and cult movies to urban legends and Internet forums, alternately focusing on the mundane or pedestrian moments in their world and adding to a larger ongoing narrative. This structure recalls the Sci-Fi television show, the X-Files, which would move forward with the central lines of the narrative, but often gave way to a “monster of the week” episode, each of which would stand alone but not apart. Taken as a whole, the series of paintings suggest an imagined world that seems at once familiar and a little off-kilter, where events continue to escalate towards ominous and uncertain ends.

The world the Pink Men inhabit is one that Weinberg assembles from the constant mining of sources at hand. To create these narratives, he begins by culling images from personal photos, art historical texts, screenshots from films or television programs he’s seen, and the millions of images that can be instantly conjured from a Google Image Search. A screenshot of a scene from a prestige cable television program may end up playing host to a Pink Man— matching the light and forms until he is indeed there— or unremarkable underwater photographs from an acquaintances’ vacation on Instagram may set the Pink Men in that same setting— adding to the ubiquitous nature of their exploits. “In my paintings, time and space are disjointed and relationships are tentative, as the Pink Men live in their own world only through the images of ours, they are at once a peculiar stranger, but also, they are us. Like an animator whose work passes through the Uncanny Valley between hyper-realism and horror, I am placing the Pink Men in contexts that provoke both anxiety and laughter in equal measures.”

As these uncertain narratives unfold, viewers are left unsure who or what to trust, and unsure who their protagonist is. Indeed, humor tempers the discomfort these suspicious subjects might provoke, and creates levity as viewers try to make connections between the familiar landscapes of their own lived experiences, the historic references that surround them online and in the world, and the outlandish suggestions of greater narratives that unfold in fantastical realms. The Pink Man paintings are built from, and so also reflect, the often incoherent, collective noise of our hyper-culture, as well as suggest a weirder world that may lie just behind it.