Stephen Haller Gallery announces CONCURRENCE and FACE UP two group exhibitions of gallery and guest artists opening June 28th and running through August 3rd.
An intimate show in Gallery III FACE UP gives examples of artists’ different approaches to the issue of identity. James Brown’s neo-primitive works reveal simple constructs: the face, the mask. What does he intend in this dialogue between modernism and tribal art? Is Richard Diebenkorn’s identity more apparent in the simple lines of an etched self-portrait, or the minimalist abstraction characteristic of his work? Linda Stojak’s potently emotional paintings have been called “psychological self-portraits.” Sam Jury’s heads are often compilations of photographic images projected on a sculpted blank then photographed and re-photographed and reworked in a computer – what is the identity of the resulting portrait? Is this of one person or many? In the dizzying array of collage elements in Nobu Fukui’s work iconic portraits are discovered, so familiar it is as if we know them. What is the role of celebrity in an image-soaked society? Kate O’Donovan Cook’s photograph plays with tropes of romanticism: the bouquet of roses, the woman gazing in a mirror, a man gazing at the woman gazing in the mirror, but careful looking reveals the man and woman are the same person, the artist herself – is it a self portrait – an exploration of identity. Is there in every work of art a portrait of the artist?
CONCURRENCE in Gallery I and II is a group exhibition of key works by gallery artists and a forecast of the upcoming fall season. This group exhibition reveals the connections, the shared sensibility, of the gallery’s core group of international artists. – www.stephenhallergallery.com
