Every first Friday of the month, the SOWA Boston Galleries at 450 Harrison Ave stay open late, a great chance to check out the openings of all the new shows!
Cody Justus
Find & Form Space never fails to exhibit distinctive and cutting edge artwork, and this month they deliver with “Season IV,” a show of work by Samara Pearlstein and Cody Justus. Pearstein and Justus both received their MFAs from the School of the Museum on Fine Arts, Boston and are frequent collaborators, allowing their work to fit effortlessly together. Both Pearlstein and Justus play with the line between descriptive and abstract. They base their paintings on photographs and ephemera, but then selectively remove information to create images that are simultaneously specific and prototypical. Justus exhibits paintings of a road sign (above) and the back of a truck, flattened and familiar, yet strange enough to demand a closer look. Justus also pairs a few of his paintings with bottled scents!
Samara Pearlstein
Pearlstein focuses on Baseball iconography, removing words and numbers from crumpled ticket stubs to create paintings that feel almost Modernist in their arrangement of color and shape. Pearlstein also recreates baseball cards, removing important information to leave strange and unsettling voids in familiar images. This show was one night only, but take a look at their websites and keep an eye on these two artists!
Samira Alikhanzadeh
Ars Libri, in partnership with the Robert Klein Gallery, continues their series of fantastic International artists with work by Iranian Artist, Samira Alikhanzadeh. Alikhanzadeh makes very effective use of mixed media in her work, adding paint and mirrors on top of large-scale photographs. She uses the mirrors to draw lines of relation between her subjects and viewers, and to allow the viewer a glimpse “inside” the image through the window-like reflections.
Larry Pollans
Nancy Selvage
The Boston Sculptors Gallery is currently exhibiting work by Larry Pollans and Nancy Selvage. Pollans’ wooden sculptures combine Picasso-like perspectives into intimate portraits of his subjects. Selvage’s work on the other hand, looks ready to step out into the park. The viewers’ interactions with the large sculptures become a vital element of the work, activating it’s colorful swooping lines.
Suzannah Sinclair
Samson Projects is exhibiting Suzannah Sinclair’s “Nature Nudes and Interiors.” Sinclair mixes together large watercolor nudes with small indoor scenes bathed in gentle light.
Alexi Antoniadis
Downstairs in Sübsamsøn, Alexi Antoniadis exhibits “None is the Number,” a wonderful collection of cutout wooden sculptures that appear abstract from a distance, but resolve into sometimes humorous figures upon closer inspection.
Jess T. Dugan
August Sanders
Gallery Kayafas pairs “Just Women” by August Sander with “Every breath we drew” by Jess T. Dugan. In Gallerist Arlette Kayafas’ words, “Both of these artists, separated by almost a century, are dedicated to the honesty of the portrait – description is everything; that resonating moment can reveal the truth.” During the early 1900s, August Sander set out the create “People of the 20th Century,” a catalogue of all the different types of people living in Germany at the time. His formal, yet revealing images are paired with the contemporary photography of Jess T. Dugan, who Gallery Kayafas has been showing since their days as an undergrad at MassArt . Dugan’s stunning photographs focus on queer identity and the multiplicity of gender. Dugan captures intimate domestic moments, investigating private and public portrayals of identity. The two sets of images ask the viewer to set aside preconceptions about what a person should look like and allow the subjects to be fully themselves before the camera. A show not to miss!
Clockwise from Top: Becky Kisabeth Gibbs, Barry Margolin, Ruth Segaloff
This month Galatea Fine Arts is exhibiting three artists working in very different media, each series with its own complex story. Barry Margolin exhibits “Emptiness and Luminosity,” a series of galaxy-esque encaustic paintings based on Buddhism and quantum entanglement. Becky Kisabeth Gibbs shows “Ocean’s Edge,” a series of oil paintings that meditate of the intricacies of the ocean’s surface. Ruth Segaloff uses found objects to create slightly haunting sculptures in “The Baggage We Carry & the Legacies We Leave.”
That’s all for this month folks, I’ll be back next month! In the meantime, you can catch me over at Suzi Looks At Lots Of Art.
Photos by Suzi Grossman.
