LONG ISLAND PAINTERS A Survey: 1890s to the Present Panel Discussion: Eclecticism: A tyranny of choice or an abundance of possibility? Saturday, June 9, 2 PM Featuring panelists Bruce Helander, John Torreano, Annie Plumb and Darius Yektai LIMITED SEATING, please RSVP here by June 6 Suggested donation of $25
Benefiting FIGHTING CHANCE, Free Cancer Counseling Center Serving the East End since 2002 |
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The exhibition Long Island Painters, A Survey: 1890s to the Present exemplifies the variety of artists that have been attracted to the beauty and creative energy of the East End of Long Island. From the 19thc to the present we have experienced an ever-expanding cacophony of styles, concepts and points-of-view within the visual arts. Each painting can be seen as a wormhole we could enter into and explore. Each one presents us with very particular ideas that may or may not overlap with the others. How do we, as viewers, deal with this eclecticism? Is there a desire to find a “universal theory” for the visual arts that address such questions as beauty and value, something similar to a universal theory in science?
All are invited to join panelists Bruce Helander, John Torreano and Annie Plumb, June 9th, 2pm. Suggested donation of $25 benefiting FIGHTING CHANCE.
Moderator Bruce Helander is an artist who writes on art. He is the former Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he received a master’s degree in painting, and is a former White House Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts. His work is represented in over 50 museum collections, including the Whitney, Guggenheim and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is a member of the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, an honor he shares with Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist. His most recent books are on Hunt Slonem, “Bunnies” (Glitterati Press) and “Chihuly: An Artist Collects” (Harry Abrams).
Annie Plumb is a private art dealer with over 30 years of experience in the art world. In the late 70s she began her career working for a deMenil and then later for Blum Helman when they were located at E. 75th Street and then on to the W. 57th Street location. Later, and then in a rotation of approximately 360 degrees, she worked for Tony Shafrazi until opening a gallery of her own for almost a decade at 81 Greene Street in 1983. Since 1991 she has worked privately.
Darius Yektai is a second generation artist as well as a Southampton native. Yektai studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA and American University in Paris. Yektai has lived a life steeped within the East End art community and his work has been exhibited extensively in both solo and group exhibitions in the NY area. His most recent solo exhibitions were at Keyes Art Projects, NY, NY (2017) and Tripoli Gallery, Southampton, NY (2015) and the group exhibitions Yektai (2017) and Selfies and Portraits of the East End (2015) at Guild Hall Museum, Easthampton, NY. His work is in international private and public collections
John Torreano discovered the lure of Long Island’s beachfront in 1970 when he was the first visual artist to be invited to the recently established residency program for writers at the Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk. Since that time, he has explored the boundaries of painting by enlisting a wide variety of conventional and unconventional materials and means: panel paintings, column paintings, plywood gem shapes, wood balls, etc., all in an effort to address the many complex ideas and questions that have emerged since the late 60’s. In the process he has challenged such modernist dogma as essentialism and the notion that art is a “container for ideas” by utilizing theory and imagery related to astronomy. His approach to meaning emphasizes a "multiplicity of points-of-view" or as he would say; "There are many stars. There are many gods."
John Torreano (b.1941, Flint, MI) has exhibited at public institutions and galleries including: the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC, the Indianapolis Museum of Fine Arts, etc. He received his BFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art (1963), and his MFA from Ohio State University (1967). Torreano is the recipient of a Nancy Graves Foundation Grant for Visual Artists, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and individual grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council of the Arts. In addition to object making he has given numerous comedic performances that address culture/art issues and is also the author of Drawing by Seeing, (Abrams 2007).
Presently an exhibition of Mr. Torreano’s work entitled Gold Gems Balls can be seen at The Drawing Room, 66 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, NY 11937- through June 11, 2017.