MEDIUMS
co-curated by Esperanza León and Irwin Levy
SoraidaBedoya FareenButt NanetteCarter DarleneCharneco
13 March - 17 May 2010
Opening Reception, Saturday 13 March, 5-7 pm
Save the Date! artists on artists visit+discussion Saturday 8 May, 4:30 p.m.
A portion of the proceeds from sales will be donated to Guild Hall of East Hampton, designated for Education.
Click here to view the exhibition
Tour featured works in the exhibition with Esperanza Leon.
Read the review by Eric Ernst in the East Hampton/Southampton Press
Read the review by Marion Wolberg Weiss in Dan’s Papers
Check out the photo gallery by Kate Petrone in The Independent
Co-curated by director/owner Esperanza León, Mediums was conceived by art collector Irwin Levy and features paintings, ceramics, and mixed media works by four artists: Soraida Bedoya, Fareen Butt, Nanette Carter, and Darlene Charneco. In a selection that came together as organically and powerfully as are most of the works on view, there is an evident manifestation of process, experimentation, and concepts old and new, political and social, historical and spiritual.
As a self-termed ‘Scapeologist’, Nanette Carter creates new worlds by layering oils, pencils, and collage on frosted Mylar, a support she employs to wondrous effect. Works from her most recent series begun in 2009, Bouquet for Loving, are featured here and in these she creates lush, sensuous, imaginary plant life with which she pays tribute to her former mentor, the artist Alvin Loving (1933-2005).
Themes of imagined and inner landscape continue through the works of Fareen Butt and Darlene Charneco. Having mastered the millennial Japanese technique of Nihonga Pointillism, Fareen Butt executes shimmering abstract canvases that can be interpreted diversely as land, sky, and water. In her Akasa series, this technique utilising pigments made from precious and semi-precious stones creates the dramatic effect of light and movement that enhances the spiritual foundation of this work, a meditation on Sufi and Vedic concepts of Creation. The term Akasa derives from the Sanskrit root ‘kas’, meaning ‘to radiate, to shine’. It can be better understood as ‘Ether’ or the medium of movement, this being the essence of Creation.
Movement and space are essential components in the mixed media works by Darlene Charneco. Inspired by real and virtual networks, organisms, codes, and symbols, Charneco uses nails to ‘transcribe’ her concepts on the threads that connect all of humanity, throughout cultures, ethnicities, and religions. Densely packed, monochromatic nail pieces that relate to her earlier series of Readings now find a confluence with works representing macro and micro worlds through subtly coloured and patterned layers of paint, nail polish, and resin on wood.
All the artists selected employ their ‘mediums’ consciously to elicit the responses sought by them toward concepts embodied in their works: expressions of memories, desires, and thoughts both individual and universal. Soraida Bedoya has worked in past with furniture as the support for her three-dimensional art. Recently, she has turned to ceramics and through them distilled her ideas on intimacy, nostalgia, and identity. Mattress coils and bedsprings are some of the familiar elements translated by the artist into a fragile matter, which becomes a greater statement on dualism: physical, philosophical, mystical, and beyond.