Paper View - Contemporary Artists Works on or of Paper

Press Release                                     PAPER VIEW

Contemporary Artists Works on or of Paper

KENISE BARNES FINE ART        

December 15 – January 12, 2013

1955 Palmer Avenue        

Larchmont, New York 10538      

Public reception Saturday, Dec.15, 2–4 PM

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Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to present Paper View - Contemporary Artists Works on or of Paper.  Works on paper historically in art have been sketches, drafts or preludes to an artwork in another medium such as oil paint or bronze.  For more than a decade, there has been a major paradigm shift in that tradition.  Contemporary artists paint, draw, cut, sculpt and pierce paper into idiosyncratic and distinct works. 

Gabe Brown – Charles Clary – Jayne Holsinger – Josette Urso -

Eleanor White – Tricia Wright

Gabe Brown ‘s watercolors explore nature and the human condition, a continuous thread in all of her artwork.  She employs a very personal visual language; symbols and patterns indicate emotions and circumstances.  The works are complexly layered and although deeply personal, they are universally understood.  Her work is whimsical and optimistic. The artist grew up in NYC, second-generation painter. She is earned her MFA at University of California, Davis, and a BFA at Cooper Union, NY.

Charles Clary, an emerging artist is from Austin, TX.  We are pleased to introduce his work to our audience.  Clary uses paper to create a world of fiction that challenges the viewer to suspend disbelief and venture into a fabricated reality. By cutting and layering paper he builds intriguing land formations that mimic viral colonies and concentric sound waves.  Cut valleys of paper and color create playful compositions that belie their origins.  The constructions visual cues are taken from microbial outbreaks and visual representation of sound waves.  Clary received his MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design.  His work is in the collections of Pierre Cardin
Pinnacle Financial
, Savannah College of Art and Design, Telfair Museum of Art
, The Cosmopolitan Hotel, to name a few.

Jayne Holsinger’s works on paper are meticusly rendered in gouache and can almost be described as “humanized” photo-realism.  Her close observations of every day objects, such as a drinking fountain, are charming and somehow feel distinctly American.  The artist was born in Indiana in a Mennonite community and has lived in New York for more than two decades.  She has been awarded The Pollack Krasner Grant.  She earned her MFA at Transart Institute/Donau-Universität Krems, Austria and currently teaches at Montclair State University, NJ.  

Teetering between urban and natural subjects Josette Urso makes exploratory drawings working directly and urgently in response to her immediate environment: space becomes an ambiguous and malleable substance.  All along the way, she engages the known as well as the unknown in unforeseen ways.  Drawing parallels the act of seeing and is the most direct link to private time with the physical world. Urso’s  drawings becomes a record of this exploration and a reflection of her inherent and vital energy.  Josette Urso has received the Pollack-Krasner Grant, Yaddo residency Grant, UCross Foundation Grant and many others.  She shows extensively in the US, Europe and Asia.  The artist lives in Brooklyn. She teaches at Cooper Union, NY.

Included in the exhibition is Eleanor White’s innovative series; Playing Card Drawings. In this series White adds or subtracts elements from paper playing cards. The artists uses a labor intensive process and with a razor blade she scratches off portions of the image leaving behind geometric patterns that are joined together to create a kind of kaleidoscope or mandala. Conceptually, the scratched card pieces are drawings; the razor blade mimics the actions one uses when creating a drawing with a pencil only in reverse, removing as opposed to applying.  White earned her MFA from Maryland Institute, College of Art.

Tricia Wright’s True Value series is comprised of small, intimate works on paper. They are pinhole drawings, made by pricking the design through the reverse of the paper. The drawings themselves reference lace; doilies and other decorative materials associated with the domestic realm, and into these are embedded prosaic, assertively functional household objects such as sink drain hardware and light switches. The title for this series—True Value—is a direct reference to the chain of hardware stores where the artist buys these vernacular objects for her work. Wright was educated in England where she received her BA at Camberwell School of Art, London, and her PG Dip. at Chelsea School of Art, London.

Please contact the gallery for images, information or to arrange a pre-view:

(914) 834-8077, Kenise@KBFA.com, Leanne@KBFA.com, website: KeniseBarnesFineArt.com.