Exhibition: July 1 to August 15

Opening Reception: July 13, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Alfa Art Gallery is proud to announce its collaboration with M-SHAC in an upcoming juried exhibition entitled “A Summer Pavilion.” The exhibition will feature the works of many prominent members of the Millburn-Short Hills Arts Center, and will be given judged by a panel with a monetary prize. There will be six awards including: Best in Show, two Awards of Excellence, and three Awards of Merit.  The exhibition will run from July 1^st to August 15^th with a reception held on July 13^th from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

M-SHAC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the development of local artists. It was founded in 1940 and is the oldest art association in northern and central Jersey with more than 150 members hailing from cities and towns across the state as well as nearby New York and Pennsylvania. The members mainly work in oil, watercolor, pastels, collage, sculpture, and photography.

M-SHAC organizes several exhibitions annually at such venues as the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn and the Mayo Center for the Performing Arts in Morristown as well as at libraries, hospitals, community centers and corporate offices with all of their shows being free and open to the public. More information about the organization can be found at www.mschac.org.

M-SHAC CALL FOR ENTRIES FORM

About the Exhibition

Originating in Paris in the 18th century, Art Salons were the most anticipated annual or biannual events.  These Salons celebrated the advances in artistic academia and highlighted the greatest artists of the time.  Inspired by the Parisian Salons, Alfa Art Gallery holds Salons to showcase the talent of nearby artists to the New Brunswick public.

Call for Entries

2013 would be the 4th year of these juried Salons.  It is because of the great success of these biannual exhibitions, Alfa Art Gallery excitedly added a third winter Salon this past January.  The Alfa Art Gallery would like to invite artists to submit work for the New Brunswick Art Salon, Fall ’13. 

All submissions must be in by Friday, October 11.
Artists will be notified if their work is accepted by October 18th.
The exhibition opening will be held on Friday, November 1
Exhibition Duration: November 1 – 29      

Media

For this exhibition, artists can submit oil color and/or mixed media paintings.    

Submission Requirements

All applicants must be artist who exhibits in New Jersey and/or tri state area.  Students and faculty member of Rutgers University and neighboring schools are encouraged to apply.  You must at least be perusing an undergraduate career to participate. 

To enter for consideration, please fill out our “Portfolio Submission Form” and follow the submission instructions listed in it. There is no entry fee.

Prizes

Historically prizes were awarded to 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd place winners. Monetary prizes consisted on $500 for 1^st, 2^nd place $300, and 3^rd place $200. 

About NBAS 2012

“There were many excellent artists in the pool of candidates, and as always with such a wide range of styles and perspectives, choosing only four artists for recognition was a challenge. The selection was based on my subjective response to the full range of works submitted.  I looked for craftsmanship, energy, individual points of view, ambition and reach….”.

By Donna Gustafson

Congratulations to the New Brunswick Art Salon winners from 2012:

First Place: Alaine Becker - “Circular Consciousness Leading to Altered Sleep”
Second Place: Alyce Gottesman - “Circular Systems Red”
Third Place: Marie Sturken  – Fiesta”
Young Emerging Artist: Ethan Sherman  – “Little Finger”

NBAS Juror

Supporting Jurors

About NBAS Photography

In its original format, the “New Brunswick Art Salon, Photography, Winter’ 2013 – Juried Show for Emerging and Professional Artists” was structured as a traditional competition for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. However, due to exceptional talents displayed, the jurors have decided to modify the awards process in order to show their support for all five contenders. They will award each artist in honor of the best image from their collection exhibited at Alfa Art Gallery. 

Congratulations to the New Brunswick Art Salon Photography winners:

Andrew Darlow, “Observatory Tree”
Aubrey Kauffman, “No Trailers”
Mark Chernin, “Boyd Park”
Neil Larsen, “Quiet City on the Raritan”
Frank Villafañe “Spring Street View”

NBAS Photography Jury 

Experimental Music Festival resonates in New Brunswick art gallery.

Omega Sound Fix III 2013

Over fifteen innovative music, spoken word, performance and video acts will take the stage on May 3rd and 4th at Omega Sound Fix III at the Alfa Art Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. The festival began in 2010 when curators Mark Weinberg and Michael Durek sought to fill a void for a New Jersey based, spirited festival showcasing unique and emerging artists operating outside the often predictable territory of mainstream music.

Over the two day showcase, audiences will witness the limitless folk sorcery of Mike Bruno (Black Magic Family Band), and Beta Test, churning out the most cutting edge, geekiest chamber music you’ve ever set ears on. Shattering forms, and walking the line between “singer­songwriter” and “experimental”, Seapost AKA Renee Maskin, will unleash a set of acoustic based music. Passionate local stalwart and WRSU radio host, Pedro Angel Serrano, will provoke thoughts with his emotional spoken word presentation. Human Adult Band will get things started on day two with their beloved sludgy movements of heavy rock. Vulpine Smile will share his singular brand of electronic catharsis while Death By Plastic will perform their new and eclectic interpretation of classic hip­hop, offering up intelligent rhymes over beats that are sure to shake your hips.

Norton Antivirus will unveil his mysterious lo­key wanderings, a kind of new age punk music built on mistakes. Little Fox will entrance the crowd with her layered sonic forms, building loops off of any instrument she can get her hands on. Bulero Holiday will debut a solo electronic set, reflecting the dark techno and pastoral soundscapes that infect his ears on a routine basis. Caitlin Cocco of MGSA breathes fresh air into the space with performance art that weaves themes of loss and desire, with presence, relationships, intimacy and comfort. Shaun Weeden (founding member of Secret Photos) will step away from his traditional band leader role to offer a jam of colorful blips and bleeps, utilizing the voice as well as pre­recorded elements.

Mariah Honecker, also of MGSA, will challenge viewers with her stimulating video contributions. The fest will also proudly feature Shaun Seneviratne, a Brooklyn­based Sri Lankan­American filmmaker with a quickly rising stock. Shaun will stop by OSF as part of his screening tour to premiere his captivating short film, “How Will We Cross The Seas?”.

Visit omegasoundfix.com for full line­up and details.

Tickets available at the door are $7 for one day, $10 for a two­day pass.

Doors open at 7 p.m. on Friday and 5 p.m. on Saturday.

Vesselin Kourtev
Oil Color and Mixed Media
Opening reception: June 1^st  

Exhibition Duration: June 1^st-June 29^th 

Alfa Art Gallery is proud to announce “Reminiscent Brushstrokes,” the upcoming exhibition of Alfa Art Gallery’s founder and resident artist, Vesselin Kourtev.  Following his last exhibition, “The Messages,” Vesselin continues to explore the abstract world he has created that connects what is seen by the eyes and the mind.  With the continued use of organic shapes and heavy references to traditionalist styles of the past, Vesselin brings a new perspective in this exhibition by taking his paintings further into a spiritual realm.  With ethereal figures intertwining themselves within powerful strokes of vibrant color, the viewer questions the relationship with the ghosts of the past and the present.  It is rare to see an artist merge figurative work with abstract work as seamlessly as Vesselin.  He creates energetic spaces in his paintings, with faces peeking out from broad planes of lively color; figures emerge from sweeping abstract landscapes, connecting the past and the present.  Vesselin’s work is harmonious – controlled but spontaneous, abstract but organic, and extremely true to self-expression.  His work appears to be sure of itself and meticulously thought out, but there is still that quality of conceptualism that lends to its modern innovation – a modern innovation that nods to the past and looks to the future.

A formally taught artist, Vesselin’s paintings are heavily inspired by the ideals of the Symbolist and the Arts and Crafts Movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He has spent many years exhibiting around the world in Bulgaria and Europe, and he has worked in the National School of Stage and Film Design in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.  In “Reminiscent Brushstrokes,” we will see a glimpse of Vesselin’s body of work throughout the years – we will see the development and evolution of his art and of a style that is characteristically unique. 

His new works will be unveiled at the opening on June 1st, with a reception starting at 7:00.  The exhibition will be on view from June 1st through June 29th.

Opening Reception: May 2 @ 7-10pm

Exhibition Duration: May 2-28

Open Tuesday-Saturday 11am- 6pm

The Alfa Art Gallery is proud to announce the spring installment of our New Brunswick Art Salon.  Because there were so many fantastic artists that submitted to our open call for artists, Alfa Art Gallery has decided to divide its Spring Salon into two separate exhibitions.  Opening on May 2, 2013 at 7pm, “Infinite Layers” will be the second installment of juried watercolor and mixed media artwork featuring established and emerging artists. 

The New Brunswick Art Salon has been a successful program for the last three years with the help of New Brunswick City Market and our sponsors.  Previously twice, now three times a year, Alfa Art Gallery presents salons exhibiting fantastic artists in different mediums.  The goal of these salons is to bridge the gap between artists and their communities, as well as unifying this diverse city of New Brunswick through the use of art.

“Infinite Layers,” the second installment of the Spring New Brunswick Art Salon Exhibition will feature the multi-media works of talented artists Andrea Abarca Coutts, Anuja Phansalkar, Chris Kapsaroff, Jane Dell, Jane Zweibel, Kristen Gillespie, Lauren Curtis, Lea Cattan, Miriam Lefkowitz, Renée Wysocki Levin, and Yelena Budylin.

The second part to Alfa Art Gallery’s spring salon of 2013 features a number of artists who fully embrace the freedoms of working in mixed media. Whereas the first part to our spring salon, “Quiet Moments,” featured artists who worked primarily in water color, in “Infinite Layers” the artists in the show combine the traditional painterly materials of water color, oil, and acrylic with a variety of outside materials. Another strong characteristic of the work in Infinite Layers is the trend towards abstraction. Artists like Chris Kapsaroff, Lauren Curtis, Lea Cattan, Miriam Lefkowitz, Yelena Budylin, and Jane Dell all work with abstraction in varying capacities, often combining it with figural imagery to create works that juxtapose familiarity and novelty. This bent towards abstraction in “Infinite Layers” also produces an overall effect much different to that of “Quiet Moments,” where the show is largely comprised of town, nature, and landscape scenes. In “Infinite Layers” the collective direction of the show is much different, as each artist employs a different technique to obscure or estrange their particular subject. For instance, in Renée Wysocki Levin’s work commonplace objects such as sea shells are magnified and rendered with extreme detail and clarity, the effect being one that brings a new, heightened awareness of a relatively commonplace object. Levin’s work is just one example of the exciting work being shown in Infinite Layers, a show that we hope will demonstrate the talent of each artist.

At Alfa Art Gallery’s second spring salon exhibition, “Infinite Layers,” there will be, along with the various works in mixed media and watercolor, a group of three sculptures provided by the New Brunswick Public Sculpture organization.

Spirit of 1776 – Edward Kolwicz

The NBPS is a not-for-profit organization, like Alfa Art Gallery, whose mission is to commission and place public art throughout the city to enhance the quality of life and encourage cultural tourism and commerce. The organization will commission a wide range of styles, primarily for outdoor display. The sculpture being exhibited in “Infinite Layers” was donated to NBPS in 2008 and is a group of three sculptures by the Metuchen based artist Edward Kolwicz. These life size sculptures are created from automobile parts and scrap metal, most of which was donated by the Charter Machine Company. In honor of the 1976 bicentennial Kolwicz sculpted three 6-foot high Revolutionary War soldiers, two of which are outfitted with drums and the third with a flute. Kolwicz has skillfully sculpted these figures in positions that imply movement and that add to their liveliness. The Drummer was perched on top of an aquatic float in 1980 along the Raritan River for the City’s Tercentennial Festival, reminding spectators of New Brunswick’s role in the Revolution. These sculptures fit in nicely with the rest of the exhibition, in which many artists make use of irregular and sometimes surprising materials. Alfa Art Gallery is proud to be able to exhibit works from the NBPS and looks forward to doing so in the future.

Photos from Exhibition Opening!

This program is sponsored in part by:

Opening Reception: April 4 @ 7-10pm

Exhibition Duration: April 4-30

Open Tuesday-Saturday 11am- 6pm

The Alfa Art Gallery is proud to announce the spring installment of our New Brunswick Art Salon 2013.  Because there were so many fantastic artists that submitted to our open call for artists, Alfa Art Gallery has decided to divide its Spring Salon into two separate exhibitions.  Opening on April 4, 2013 at 7pm, “Quiet Moments” will be the first installment of juried watercolor and mixed media artwork featuring established and emerging artists. 

The New Brunswick Art Salon has been a successful program for the last three years with the help of New Brunswick City Market and our sponsors.  Previously twice, now three times a year, Alfa Art Gallery presents salons exhibiting fantastic artists in different mediums.  The goal of these salons is to bridge the gap between artists and their communities, as well as unifying this diverse city of New Brunswick through the use of art.

“Quiet Moments,” the first installment of the Spring New Brunswick Art Salon Exhibition will feature the beautiful watercolor works of talented artists Arlene Cornell, Indriani Choudhury, Jinnie May, Judy Ballance, Marilyn Rose, Medy Bozkurtian, Neela Pushparaj, and Rose Reilly Leonard.  Each artist has their own style respectively, but when viewed together the pieces create a tranquil silence that is easy to get lost in.

Artist Interviews (more coming soon)

Photos from Exhibition Opening!

This program is sponsored in part by:

Opening reception: March 21^st  @ 1:30

Alfa Art Gallery is proud to announce that their New Brunswick Through Artists Eyes Exhibition, which debuted on January 10^th, is going to be exhibited at George Street Playhouse from March 12^th to April 7^th.  This exhibition will be on display at the foyer of George Street Playhouse during their theatrical run of “Rich Girl,” a comedy by Victoria Stewart and directed by Michael Bloom. This exhibition displays a large array of cultural and demographic interests that exist within New Brunswick, and intends to capture the diverse cultures of many talented photographers as they portray New Brunswick through their eyes. This juried exhibition showed the works of many talented artists that instead of traditionally ranking the artists, the jury decided to award them all for their best image.

The featured artists include: Andrew Darlow, Aubrey J Kauffman, Frank Villafane, Mark Chernin and Neil Larsen. 

For further information, contact the George Street Playhouse Box Office, 732-246-7717, or Alfa Art Gallery at 732-296-6720, or visit the organizations websites: www.GSPonline.org or www.AlfaArt.org.

George Street Playhouse is located at 9 Livingston Avenue in the heart of New Brunswick’s dining and entertainment district.

Originating in Paris in the 18^th century, art salons were the most anticipated annual and biannual events. These salons provided artists with the opportunity to exhibit their work alongside their contemporaries while receiving critical as well as public response. Inspired by the Parisian Salons, Alfa Art Gallery holds Salons to showcase the talent of nearby artists to the New Brunswick public.

Call for Entries

2013 will be the 4^th year of these juried Salons. The Alfa Art Gallery would like to invite artists to submit work for the New Brunswick Art Salon, Spring ‘13. There will be two artist categories:  newly emerging artists and professional artists.

All submissions must be in by Friday, March 15^th.

Artists will be notified if their work is accepted by Monday, March 18th. 
The exhibition opening will be held on Thursday, April 4^th

Exhibition Duration: April 4^th - 30^th

Media
For this exhibition, artists must work in the mediums of watercolor or mixed media.

Submission Requirements

All applicants must be artist who exhibits in New Jersey and/or tri state area.  Students and faculty member of Rutgers University and neighboring schools are encouraged to apply.  You must at least be perusing an undergraduate career to participate. 

To enter for consideration, please fill out our “Portfolio Submission Form” and follow the submission instructions listed in it. There is no entry fee.

Prizes

Historically prizes were awarded to 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd place winners. Monetary prizes consisted on $500 for 1^st, 2^nd place $300, and 3^rd place $200. 

Opening reception: March 7 @ 6 – 10pm

Awards Ceremony: Announcing the winners of the New Brunswick Art Salon 2012 Juried Exhibition

On March 7^th we celebrate Alfa’s Fifth Anniversary and the Non-Profit Idea, with an exhibition organized in collaboration with the Sylvia Wald and Kim Po Art Gallery. We will then continue with the Best in Show Awards Ceremony for the New Brunswick Art Salon 2012, the awards for which were generously provided by the New Brunswick City Market. The exhibition, curated by Jeffrey Wechsler, will be open to the public from March 1^st to March 29^th.

The Alfa Art Gallery is a non-profit institution serving the New Brunswick community with exhibitions and multidisciplinary arts related activities since Jan 2008.  In this exhibition, the Alfa Art Gallery celebrates the wide-ranging spirit of public service in the arts by featuring another non-profit gallery –  the Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery, located at 417 Lafayette Street, in Manhattan. 

The common bonds between the two non-profit galleries are seen in their mutually shared activities and ideals:

• Presenting established and emerging artists and thematic group exhibitions, including artists of regional, national, and international scope
• Advancing art education through the engagement of interns pursuing careers in the visual arts, communications, design, and related fields
• Offering educational and cultural programming for the general public

The Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, was founded by Korean-born American artist Po Kim and his wife, American artist Sylvia Wald. The Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery’s primary mission is to preserve, maintain and perpetuate the legacy of the founders’ uniquely accomplished artistic careers and to exhibit the founders’ art works to promote and widen its public appreciation.  In 2009, working with local and international cultural institutions, the Gallery began to host special temporary art exhibitions covering a wide array of themes and media, and now maintains an active schedule of such displays.

Due to the significant status held by Po Kim within the field of modern Korean art, as well as his continuing professional relationship with his native land, the internship program at the Wald/Kim Gallery has focused on students from Korea who are pursuing degrees in the visual arts at institutions in the metropolitan area.  This exhibition presents work by Sylvia Wald and Po Kim, along with work by six individuals who currently work at the Gallery: the interns Woojae Kang, Tina Hyun Jin Kim, Winter Gyeoul Kim, Hwa Jin Lee, and Suji Park – and also Sumin Hong, the Gallery Manager of the Wald/Kim Gallery, who had been an intern.  The works by the interns offer an intriguing look into the development of artists during the early years of their careers, in media including painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture.  In subject, the works range from pure abstraction to mysteriously surreal figuration.

The art displayed by Po Kim and Sylvia Wald comprises a very small sampling from the many styles and techniques used by the artists during their long and productive lives.  Po Kim, born in Korea in 1917, came to New York in 1957; Sylvia Wald, born in Philadelphia in 1915, had been living in New York since 1937.  They met in New York in 1968 and married soon after.  Wald passed way in 2011; Kim continues to live and work in Manhattan. 

During his first years in America, Kim showed a direct engagement with his new art environment, embracing Abstract Expressionism.  Yet his work was also visibly suffused with the aesthetic of his Korean heritage.  This is especially evident in the fluid, calligraphic movements of his brushstrokes in a series of more than 180 small paintings on paper Kim produced from 1960-62 that feature independent and overlapping swirls, thick and thin rapid gestures, and elegantly dispersed blots.  The paintings concentrate within reduced surfaces the energy seen in his contemporary large canvases.  Never satisfied to work in one method and thus forgoing a signature style, Kim abruptly shifted his approach in the 1970s, creating highly realistic still life drawings of fruits and vegetables, meticulously rendered in colored pencil, such as Pear 3 and Celery 3 in the present exhibition.  From the 1980s onward, Kim practiced variations on expressionist figuration and abstraction.

Sylvia Wald was always something of an artistic polymath, concentrating on a particular medium – printmaking, painting, sculpture and assemblage – through stretches of time. Wald’s greatest reputation lay in the field of printmaking, and this aspect of her work is featured in the current exhibition, which includes silkscreens and woodcuts from the 1950s and 1960s.  She is particularly admired for her innovations with the silkscreen medium, which made great use of the viscous properties of screenprint ink and its potential for a wide range of textural effects.  Wald’s prints often incorporated semi-spontaneous forms, controlled within her compositions through her full understanding of her medium.  This is well demonstrated by her Abstract Expressionist silkscreens, among the earliest and most coherent uses of the print media within that style.  Works like her Written in Sunlight I present the explosive linear and gestural power of “action painting,” filled with linear motifs that zigzag through the image like lightning bolts.  Wald could also produce masterful prints with realistic subjects, such as the carefully observed and subtly printed Sleeping Dog. 

The exhibition was curated by Jeffrey Wechsler, who retired in 2011 as Senior Curator from the Zimmerli Art Museum of Rutgers University.

Images from the opening reception

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This program is sponsored in part by:

Exhibition Duration: January 31 – February 26

The Alfa Art Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of our exhibition of Nina Tomczak’s Russian Fine and Decorative Artwork. The opening reception will be on January 31 at 6pm, with an open studio and lecture about the presented artists on February 15 at 7pm. 

Nina Tomczak is a big collector of Russian Fine and Decorative Art. During a stay in Moscow, Nina became an active member of the International Woman’s Club, where she headed the Moscow Art Group. There, she was given an opportunity to meet various famous Russian contemporary painters and to be exposed to a beautiful Russian Decorative Art, which she began to collect. Nina’s collection of Russian Fine and Decorative Art, being exhibited at Alfa, highlights talented Contemporary Russian painters from several different cultures and background.

The exhibited artists in Nina’s collection include: Andrei Averyanov, focusing on portraits and bodies; Irina Korsakova, creating a unique style of art, trying to stray away from other influences; Lev Dyakonitsyn, painting a speculative presence in an inventive reality; Pavel Lazarev, approaching canvases with an ornamental and almost geometrical form; Victor Kazarin, creater of the new painting style of Russian post-suprematism; Vasily Shevchenko, creating a modern folklore with his paintings; Oleg Tolstoy; and Yuri Grigorian. 

Alfa Art Gallery will present Nina Tomczac’s collection of famous Russian contemporary artists:

• Andrei Averyanov
• Andrei Medvedev
• Irina Korsakova
• Lev Dyakonitsyn
• Oleg Tolstoy
• Pavel Lazarev
• Vasily Shevchenko
• Victor Kazarin
• Yuri Grigorian

All exhibited artworks will be available for sale!

Photos from Exhibition Opening!

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