October 15th @6:30-10:00 PM
Alfa Art Gallery invites you to New Brunswick Art Salon: Oil Color and Mixed Media, “L’Appel Du Vide” featuring representations of the nuances of nature, using oil color and mixed media.
Exhibition Preview: October 14th @6:30pm-10:00PM
Exhibition Opening: October 15th @ 6:30pm-10:00PM
Exhibition Duration: September 27th – November 20th 2016
Exhibiting Artists: Dorothea Berkhout, Elinor Meeks, Enrique Zaldivar, Francisco Araneo, Joel Rudin, Lauren Curtis, Lyle Kleinhans, Maria Bouquet, Meredith Turshen, Michael Hanna, Paul Mordetsky, Tania Ianovskaia, Teriz Michael, Vadim Levin
We are pleased to invite you to the New Brunswick Art Salon: Oil and Mixed Media 2016, highlighting artists who excel in their work manipulating oil and mixed media pieces. The 14 featured artists are prominent local figures whom have exhibited their work in gallery shows throughout the greater New York area or have worked with Alfa Art Gallery in previous exhibitions. Through the exhibition, you will witness local talents from the New Brunswick area, and beyond, whom reflect and inspire the rich artistic culture of the community.
“L’Appel Du Vide” focuses on the everlasting flow of life, matter, and nature. Thus, providing a glance into one’s experience of nature’s materialized essence, both tangible and intangible. From using the power of the Feminine and Nature to form personal myth-stories by Lauren Curtis, to connections between silence and mindfulness that have captured depth within spirituality in relation to the world from Maria Bouquet, all of our artist are coming together to lessen the divide between artist and the community. Reminiscent of the Art Salons of the 18th and 19th century, the New Brunswick Art Salon was launched to promote the ever-evolving advances in the arts. Please join Alfa Art Gallery for a night of celebrating an exclusive glimpse into multifaceted impressions of the ever-changing human experience.
About Artists:
“L’Appel Du Vide” features many talented artists, both renowned and currently establishing themselves.
Dorothea Berkhout uses her Dutch heritage to mimic still lifes of the 15th and 16th centuries in classical settings. She is interested with shadow and light, along with highlighting objects to reflect the angle of light making her subjects appear almost palpable. Her passion for nature influenes her to paint still lives, scenery, and figures. Her paintings exhibit a realistic approach and perspective. She prefers to paint with oils as they provide the ability to intensify paintings and subjects by layering the paint and increasing depth. Having traveled both nationally and internationally, her paintings render the beauty, balance, and order that is portrayed in her work.
Elinor Meeks has been making pictures with words and visual mediums for as long as she can remember. Connecting and reflecting in these ways helped her adapt to frequent moves in this country and abroad growing up, and lead to her work in documentary film production and public television programming and to her writing for publications including The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Medium. Her lifelong engagement with art — begun with the hours spent painting watercolors with her grandmother — is expanding into collage and mixed media and to a first-time focus on exhibition and creative community building activities.
Enrique Zaldiver uses his tropical Cuban heritage along with his appreciation for the colorful autumns of the United States for the inspiration of his artwork. Avoiding mixing more than two colors, Zaldiver’s surreal landscapes exhibit simple and profound use of color. With the use of the expressive properties of acrylic paint, he employs complementary colors to create balance. The landscapes reflect the meaning of life, death, freedom, religion, power, and exile—themes Zaldivar holds dear.
Francisco Araneo’s world was shook when he began suffering from a severe spinal injury and autoimmune disease. This self-proclaimed “hard-core athlete” began painting as therapy, deriving his artistic style from a dream during one of the worst nights of his illness. Spending several years alone and confined to a wheelchair, Araneo found hope and healing by painting his dreams as subject of his art. His paintings preach strength through difficult times. All of his hard work has led him to having solo shows in New York City.
Joel Rudin creates imaginary, mystical, surreal, and foreboding landscapes. His palette consists of mostly veiled and muted colors, evoking old photographs. Rudin creates a sense of vastness and space of faraway vistas with distant formations half seen in the mist. Rudin’s artistic career was foreshadowed when as a child, his sixth grade teacher, sympathetic to his art leanings, was assigned to create an image of the solar system in color chalks across the classroom blackboard. Rudin’s principal medium is pastel, thinly applied, mixed with other materials, pencil, crayon, oil pastel, watercolor and gouache.
Lauren Curtis focuses on the interconnectedness of art, spirituality and culture. She expresses her beliefs recalling the power of the Feminine and Nature. Curtis’ art is inspired by various mythological and symbolic systems of both ancient and modern cultures. Using artwork and photography, often inspired her travels within the US and Europe to tell personal stories of the world as she experienced it, and of herself as an individual in that world. Respecting the differences of people, as well as their similarities, Curtis tells her stories. When creating art, Curtis uses diverse materials, and for each piece, selects the media that best exemplifies the symbols and subjects. Whether it’s through painting, collage, or photography, each image becomes it’s own personal myth-story.
Lyle Kleinhans studied drawing and sculpture at the University of Wisconsin in the 1950’s, but his life diverged from that interest when the exigencies of supporting a family interceded. His interest in art had diminished however, and over the years Lyle visited many of the major museums of Europe and the U.S. Now, after a break of 55 years, he returns to his first love – art. Kleinhans has been drawing for 4 years and painting for the last 2 years. Kleinhans’ works through abstract figurative representations in oil. Kleinhans’ paintings are another picture of reality viewed through the skewed or jaundiced filter of his mind. This filter works to deepen the mystery of life and cast light on the existence of life.
Maria Bouquet’s spiritual experiences and personal transformations of herself and others inspire her art. The connections between silence and mindfulness have acted as a transforming agent in Bouquet’s life, aiming to capture depth within spirituality in relation to the world. She considers herself a seeker, always searching for truth and knowledge and living with a purpose. Beauty and abundance in the world combined with questions like “Why am I here?” and “Who am I” govern Bouquet’s growth and works.
Meredith Turshen, an artist, teacher, and writer currently teaching at Rutgers University New Brunswick, began her art studies at age ten at the Art Students League in New York with Saturday classes for children. After majoring in studio art at Oberlin College, Turshen has participated in workshops at Pratt, the Printmaking Council of NJ, the Rutgers Center for Innovative Printmaking, the CT Center for Graphic Arts, and elsewhere. Through her artwork, she reflects on nature, the mystery of the human figure. Her paintings reflect an interest in body movement and dance theater, particularly the work of Alwin Nikolais. She exhibits regularly in the New York metropolitan region, with Viridian Gallery in Chelsea, and with hob’art, an arts cooperative based in Hoboken.
Michael Hanna’s art is a culmination from a lifetime of training and experimentation, a style which he refers to as industrial planes. The key element in his paintings is tension from many variables, which make his works quite complex. In all formats of his art– paintings, experimental paintings, drawings, and digital– cyberpunk culture acts as theme. Hanna’s experimental paintings with oil on steel, electronic components, and crystals, have an analysis of a deeply exotic, hi-tech future, in a state of social collapse. With emerging advanced technologies such as fusion, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and biological engineering, Hanna believes it is his role as an artist to address his current world. Hanna comments on the world’s ever increasing reliance on technology, the destabilization and collapse of nations from the Middle East to Ukraine, the increasingly authoritarian and oligarchic structure of Western society, and provides perceptions as to the social reaction, context, and rebellion of our transition to an age of transhumanism. He makes art which is complex and cerebral.
Paul Mordetsky finds his primary inspiration from landscapes. Using landscapes for both aesthetic and metaphorical reasons, he represents space and light within the graphic language. The mood and atmosphere of the scene define Mordetsky’s works. The artist works from drawings, memory, and news media photos as reference for the mood and atmosphere of the piece.
Tania Ianovskaia uses her works to reflect her identity and life. As the artist changes, so does her art. As Ianovskaia experiences life events and struggles, these themes demonstrate themselves in her works. Ianovskaia immerses herself in the pieces, living in the painting rather than reality.
Teriz Michael, born in Cairo, Egypt, began her intensive art studies in High School and continued until earning a BFA in fine arts. After traveling extensively in Egypt, she uses her photographs as references for paintings and drawings. Some of her most notable abstract works of art are derived from memory, emotion, and spirituality. Her work has earned her various awards that includes receiving a Sila Rhodes Scholarship at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Vadim Levin was born in Minsk, Belarus and grew up among famous artists who have inspired his artwork. Levin creates works that represent his view on the world, the complexity of life, his feelings, vision and personality. The works aim to make people think and revisit every day values. All Levin’s current paintings feature oil on canvas. Currently, Vadim Levin and his family reside in East Brunswick, NJ.
