Exhibition Duration: January 31, 2023 – March 18, 2023
Virtual Opening Reception: February 9, 2023 @ 6:30pm to 9pm
In-Person Opening Reception: February 17, 2023 @ 6:30pm to 9pm
On January 31st, Alfa Art Gallery invites the community to enjoy the newest photography exhibition from New Brunswick Art Salon, “Refracted: Shade and Light”. This group exhibition will feature artists from across the tri-state area and beyond.
“Refracted: Shade and Light” brings to light thirteen wonderful artists all with varied backgrounds and inspirations. This exhibition, showing over three months, showcases a myriad of approaches to photography. In this exhibition powerful visual storytelling, stunning impressions, as well as unique techniques are all displayed. “Refracted: Shade and Light”, features unique artists like Jean-Paul Picard’s hand bent aluminum prints that bring a third dimension to photography, Juan Giraldo’s poignant storytelling, and Anita Sagastegui’s remarkable perspective of flora and fauna. Every artist in this exhibition brings their own techniques ranging from traditional film to sophisticated digital editing tools.
“Refracted: Shade and Light” is the newest exhibition in the over decade long tradition of Alfa’s New Brunswick Art Salon (NBAS) program. Alfa Invites you to join us for another beautiful showing of both local and new artists to the New Brunswick community. “Refracted: Shade and Light” can be viewed from Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm at Alfa Art Gallery.
Featured Artists: Anastasia Codjebas, Brian Hallas, Danielle Austen, David Anderson, Jean-Paul Picard, JoAnn Telemdschinow, Juan Giraldo, Lauren Curtis, Lee Day, Parvathi Kumar, Peichi Waite, Samuel Vovsi
About the “New Brunswick Art Salon” Exhibitions:
Alfa Art Gallery utilizes New Brunswick Art Salons (NBAS) to unify the local art community and beyond. Since starting the program in 2010 Alfa Gallery has made a point to include a salon dedicated to singularly to photography. Over the years, the NBAS has not only exhibited works from both established and emerging artists but has also made fruitful connections locally and internationally through its successful programs. Within this non-profit organization, Alfa Art Gallery maintains its mission to uplift artists by providing an open and innovative environment. These exhibitions are free and open to the public from Tuesday to Saturday from 11 am to 6 pm.
“Refracted: Shade and Light”, 2023 NBAS Photography Virtual Exhibition
Featured Artists:
Anastasia Codjebas: Having lived in Moldova, Russia, New York City and now New Brunswick Anastasia Codjebas is a photographer who’s sense of home comfort and growth has been depend by her experiences. Always artistic, she has found her passion in photography, her years of experience have allowed her to make her voice clear through her portraiture. Her work explores her own feminine energy and nature as well as that of her subjects. In Codjebas’s images themes of the female body, growth and change, sensuality and sexuality, vulnerability and intimacy are presented. Her unique perspective allows her to take an introspective approach to representing her world.
Brian Hallas: As a New Jersey based artist with experience as a sound designer Brian Hallas connects his ability to visualize sound with his affinity for photography. He is inspired by many artists who practice in a variety of mediums. As an artist of an advanced age, Grandma Moses is a notable inspiration. Within his work, Hallas seeks to first and foremost entertain himself, to create work that firstly he enjoys and then hopes to share that with others. In his work he edits and distorts his images in order to emphasize textures, contours, patterns, hues, and moods and subsequently layers the images to creates his final works. In his latest works, Hallas has taken note from the plants and flower that surround his daily life. He has then, through his process created abstract blooms in his words, “seeking to discover the mysteries that lie therein”.
Danielle Austen: Trained in photojournalism and the fine arts, Danielle Austen works to create intimate portraits of nature. She is inspired by the natural world, specifically the individual elements that create the landscape around us. Through photography Austen explores the movement within the elements and how they interact and shape their surroundings by exploring the interplay of light, patterns, and tones. In this series she explores our relationship with water. She presents it as a mirror of humanity, both tranquil and turbulent. With this series she hopes to “communicate the spirituality of nature and possibly the spirituality within ourselves”.
David Anderson: After a 45 year long career in educational measurement David Anderson has returned to photography. In his work, he seeks to explore the elements of design. Contrast, shape, movement, harmony, and pattern create the focus in his works. Through his combination and isolation of these elements he creates a juxtaposition of the obvious and the unfamiliar. Anderson’s works feel elemental, allowing us to fully appreciate every detail. Through his beautifully simple compositions we are afforded an almost otherworldly yet familiar perspective.
Jean-Paul Picard: New Jersey based photographer and Parson’s graduate Jean-Paul Picard creates unorthodox photography. Inspired by 20th century painters such as Mondrian and Stella who created works outside the standard flat canvas card seeks to escape the viewfinder’s limitations. Through his technique of moving the camera across the picture plane images the closely reminisce the impression of memories are created. Blurred shapes and sharp lines make up these complete yet fragmented images. His photographs take on the three dimensional as well in his hand bent aluminum prints. In his own words, “each of my photographs as movies condense in to one single frame”.
JoAnn Telemdschinow: JoAnn Telemdschinow is a largely self-taught New Jersey based photographer. Her work is inspired by her love of art and architecture from the past. Her interests in travel, history and mythology influence her work as well. Her work is evocative of different moods. She creates atmospheric images creating a whole mood around them. Although her photography is contemporary in nature, she manipulates her images to give them a nostalgic and vintage feeling. Her work culminates in aesthetically appealing and intriguing images.
Juan Giraldo: Juan Giraldo is a Columbian born, New Jersey based photographer. After moving to Patterson, New Jersey in 1981 as a child the working-class city has greatly influenced his personal and political views as an artist. Themes in his work include verisimilitude, identity, and dignity. Giraldo appreciates what may be considered mundane in his work where details, beauty and drama are found. The beauty in the banality of domestic life are reveled, his images picture a textured, intimate, and tangible feeling. In his photographs Giraldo employs a new iconography to illustrate a reverence for the personal history and lives of the people he photographs.
Lauren Curtis: In her work, Lauren Curtis expresses her beliefs, she draws on various mythological and symbolic systems of both ancient and modern culture with roots in the Feminine and nature to do so. She tells her personal stories through her photography, often inspired from her travels through the United States and Europe. Earth-centered religions also inspire Curtis’s work focusing on the ideology that we are all connected and contain our own beauty. Similarities and differences circulate through her work. HIs her work each image becomes its own personal myth.
Lee Day: Since the age of 11, Lee Day has been hooked on photography, his mission to fix hiss impressions of fleeting moments has remained unchanged. In his work, framing the moment is essential to understanding the images he creates. By isolating one piece of the world, he allows it to be inspected and interrogated combing this traditional element of photography with digital tools these moments remained anchored in our interconnected world. In this way he expands upon the format of photography. In his series Water Abstraction, he illustrates moments found in quarantine in the height of the pandemic. The wildness of the rushing water, reflecting the turbulent outside world of fragmented community and tense politics.
Parvathi Kumar: Raised on manual digital photography, Parvathi Kumar’s work is rooted in the tradition of photography while embracing the digital age. She has gained an understanding of light control and behavior which is evident in her work. She uses a multitude of applications to manipulate her photographs after the initial capture to achieve the desired effect. She also is partial to historic forms of photography such as cyanotype which she has managed to combine with digital photography. Inspired by all types of photography, her work reaches to combine all her inspirations to make the best of photography as an art form.
Peichi Waite: Peichi Waite is an emerging photographer based in Highland Park, New Jersey with a background in education and sociology. She has lived in ten cities prior to Highland Park and her varied perspectives come together to inspire her work. The physical, emotional and spiritual displacement inherent to her migration in her life has allowed her to look into new ways of visualizing a place. Waite seeks to frame the sacred beauty of a place and the weight that it holds in the hearts of both the individual and community. In her prices, she spends a great deal of tie with each place, both physically by walking and exploring its streets but also by seeking historical archives of documents, photography, maps and artifacts. The resulting work is intentional, sensitive and gives a sense of healing.
Samuel Vovsi: Born in St. Petersburg then having lived in Latvia, Samuel Vovsi immigrated to the United Sates in 1989 and proceeded to have a long and successful career in academia and as a software developer. All while having what was just a hobby of photography. His hubby tuned into a passion as he combined it with his love of travel and exploration. With his prior experience digital photography has come naturally. He is inspired still by travel but his work also encompases landscapes, cityscapes, everyday life, and architecture. His extensive travel in the former Soviet Union and less accessible areas inspire his work, striving to share his impressions of his experiences.
NBAS’2021 is sponsored by:
With the assistance of grants from organizations such as Amboy Bank, Magyar Bank, Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick City Center, Middlesex County Cultural, and Heritage Commission, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Pfizer Inc. Alfa Art is confident that all who come to the 2023 Photography New Brunswick Art Salon will leave with a greater appreciation of the arts and the gallery’s showcasing of a variety of artists.
