Exhibitions
The Fields Sculpture Park at the Omi International Arts CenterIs pleased to announce the 2004 specially curated show:
PUBLIC NOTICE:
PAINTING IN THE SCULPTURE PARK
June 19 through October 31st
by Sabine Russ and Gregory Volk
Public Notice: Painting in the Sculpture Park features six billboard-sized original paintings installed in The Fields, the sculpture park at Omi. This unusual exhibition of outdoor paintings radically extends what a sculpture park is and can be, including its most basic role as a place to display sculptures. Instead of durable sculptures made from metal, stone, or other materials, one will find actual paintings specially prepared to function as outdoor works. Participating in the exhibition are Thordis Adalsteinsdottir, Mike Ballou, Ati Maier and Tilo Schulz, Joyce Pensato, Greg Stone, and Carrie Waldman. Each of these artists has made a new, large-scaled work specifically for the exhibition. Among other things, Public Notice gives these already accomplished painters the opportunity to work on an extremely large scale in an unlikely location - directly in the landscape.
The size and format of these paintings recalls roadside billboards promoting products or enticing visitors to hotels, restaurants, or tourist sites. However, instead of directing the public's attention to elsewhere, for instance a product to be purchased or a site to be visited, these outdoor paintings will concentrate attention on their own inner workings, visual appeal, and conceptual motivations. Spanning representation and abstraction, the paintings of Public Notice all have a highly imaginative and at times otherworldly aspect. For this exhibition, alien paintings land on the sculpture park's field and do so with intelligence, risk, and wonderment.
Thordis Adalsteinsdottir, a young Icelandic artist based in New York, is known for her quirky, oftentimes female figures set within monochromatic fields. Sculptor, videomaker, and painter Mike Ballou is one of the principal artists who emerged from, and significantly influenced, the thriving arts community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Ati Maier, a German artist based in New York, is known for science fiction- tinged paintings involving space travel and cosmic events. Here, she invited German artist Tilo Schulz to collaborate on a text and image painting. New York artist Joyce Pensato is known for her vivid, frequently brooding and tumultuous, paintings incorporating pop culture icons and cartoon figures. Greg Stone, also from New York, uses wet tar subjected to his highly unusual processes in intricately patterned paintings. Carrie Waldman, who divides her time between New York City and Hudson, New York, is known for her intense floral and foliage paintings in which flowers, especially, are at once ultra-realistic and fantastical.
Sabine Russ, a New York-based critic, curator, and editor who is originally from Leipzig, Germany, and Gregory Volk, a New York-based critic and curator, have together curated numerous exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Korea. Mr. Volk's writing has been featured in Art In America, Artforum , and manyh other leading international publications. Their exhibition Home Extension was on view at the University Art Museum in Albany from January - April 2004.
Curators of The Fields are Kathleen Triem and Peter Franck
One Person Exhibit:
Tom Gottsleben: Living Stone
The Exhibition opened July 18th, 2004 and will be on view through the Fall of 2005.
Tom Gottsleben, Branch, bluestone, stainless steel, 1995
New sculptures for 2004:
Lewis DeSoto
Margaret Evangeline
Ronald Gonzalez
Robert Lobe
Robert Perless
John Ruppert
Foon Sham