Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to announce Soundings, an exhibition curated by Nancy Cohen with work by Cristina De Gennaro, Dale Emmart, Reeva Potoff, And Barbara Zucker. The show accompanies Cohen’s solo show, Walking a Line, and will be up through March 26, 2022. Cohen has written about the concept behind the exhibition and about each artist below:
Sounding: To make a sounding is to dip a string into water to measure its depth, to understand it in a way that would otherwise not be obvious. For a researcher, it provides information needed before the work can proceed.
The artists in Soundings make work that is visually engaging and beautiful, much of it initially communicating in the language of abstraction. But as the viewer digs deeper into the work, looking more carefully, letting questions bubble to the surface, reading the titles — a greater complexity and layered meaning reveals itself. You can begin to see how the course of action unfolds.
The artists in this show make work that involves research into nature, culture, science, and the body. Through their individual investigations they have developed personal and unpredictable visual languages to express their findings.
Cristina de Gennaro considers the sublime through decay and regeneration. Her landscape drawings closely study the flora that comprise the desert and forest floors, exploring tensions between pattern and complexity, beauty, and chaos.
Dale Emmart studies our atmosphere. Her works on paper reference urban exhaust, industrial fumes, and smoke generated by city environments, suggesting complications of industry and climate. The edge between description and abstraction is her primary motivation.
Beginning several years ago with mold accidentally grown in a coffee cup in her studio, Reeva Potoff has been focusing on microbial activity, photographing, and developing that initial growth into complex digital prints that belie their origins. Scroll-like prints are incorporated into visceral installation-based work speaking about the transient nature of life.
“Nose Job” and “Liposuction Buttocks” are two sculptures’ from “For Beauty’s Sake” Barbara Zucker’s 1994 Artist’s Space exhibition examining cosmetic surgery. With her characteristic deadpan humor, fierce wit, and impeccable precision this work will make you laugh while you wince in emotional and physical pain at the same time.
To learn more about the gallery please visit www.markelfinearts.com
