ARTIST TALKS
Interviewed by Aaron Boucher
REXER Contemporary Art / 2020
September 17th / 8p - 9p
Roy Kinzer has always been interested in the aesthetic patterns that occur freely in nature. He is particularly aware of fractals and self-similarity through Dr. Richard Taylor’s articles describing Jackson Pollock’s paintings. This led him to “The Fractal Geometry of Nature” by Benoit Mandelbrot. Fractal sets have similar contours when focusing in or zooming out, so a grain of sand can appear to have the same outline as the coastline of a continent.
Kinzer’s paintings are fractal landscapes and cityscapes derived from digitally altered topographical maps and satellite images. He works in the tradition of the Hudson River School Luminist painters, who used perspective, magnified scale and dramatic lighting to explore the sublime, the feeling of rapture or awe caused by the beauty and terror of nature.
His Luminist techniques of color and solarization apply the aesthetics of fractal patterns to simulate a view of earth as taken from a satellite. Take a moment to appreciate the artist’s representation of urban self-similar patterns and shapes that repeat across different scales. Each element holds the same properties as the larger system. Dense areas alternate with empty space. Small networks and clusters have the same outlines as city limits and borders. This feature also allows the artist to incorporate other elements that interest him, such as collaged maps, to bring together abstract and representational shapes.
Kinzer’s intended effect with the pieces exhibited here today is to create a sense of isolation, fantasy and exaggeration by using an overhead perspective and by disrupting the cityscape with scratch marks, scrape marks and bleached-out light effects. These gestures tear into the repetitive fabric of the urban landscape and eat into the surface like atmospheric disturbances.
Roy Kinzer received his Master’s in Fine Arts from Vermont College. He is a recent recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. He has shown widely throughout the United States, including solo exhibitions at The Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY, the Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ, and the J. Rosenthal Gallery in Chicago. His work has been reviewed The New York Times, The Sunday Star Ledger, and the Village Voice.
Further References / Roy Kinzer
September 25th / 8p - 9p
Fabricio Suarez is an artist from Uruguay working in NY/NJ area. He received his BFA in Fine Arts and illustration from the School of Visual Arts. He has exhibited in numerous group shows in NJ, NY and LA and has participated in residencies at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City and Artists Off-the-Grid, in Red Feather Lakes, Colorado.
His current studio practice is described as Abstract Baroque and consists of sublime surrealist paintings, distorting traditional European portraits and landscapes with spiritual elements of American savagery with abstract brushstrokes acting as “characters” to form a narrative within the landscape.
Fabricio is an avid plein air painter and focuses on capturing the urban landscapes of the U.S, Europe and South America.
His current studio is in Jersey City.
Further References / Fabricio Suarez
October 1st / 8p - 9p
Bruce Stiglich, an Artist and Designer from Philadelphia, PA, received his BFA from Philadelphia College of Art in 1973 and the Art Achievement Award in 1972. In 1987, Bruce received his MFA from The University at Albany, and The President’s Award in 1988.
In 2004, he received the Adolphe Gottlieb Grant, the Rockwell Artist Grant in 2011, and he was awarded The ESKFF Foundation Studio Residency and Grant in 2014.
Bruce taught Beginning and Advanced Painting and a Post Bachelor Intensive Studio at Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art in Pont-Aven, Brittany, France from 2002-2008, and he has taught Visual Communications 2&3, Design 1&2, and Visual Merchandising at the Parsons School of Design beginning in 2003.
October 1st / 9p - 10p
As an abstract artist, Rob Ventura is interested in organic and biological forms as a means of generating imagery and conceptual unity. Whether working in oil paint, ceramic, photography, or a drawing medium, he likes to create images that are expressively reminiscent of plant life or cellular forms. Often, his works are directly inspired by anatomical botanical illustrations of flowers and fauna, as well as art historical still-life painting. As a result, Ventura synthesizes the iconography of such mentioned illustrations to imagine new biological lifeforms, generating his own surreal plantlike forms in a process that mirrors natural evolution.
Biological forms become the eloquent vocabulary that Ventura employs to describe a universe of color and form that delights the imagination. Each of the visual elements that integrates his compositions confine the viewer to a unique stimulating experience. As you look closer, you will participate in a dance of accents and rhythms that breathe life into a cohesive landscape that references the living world beyond microscopic or plant biology but elevates it to a metaphysical vision.
Rob Ventura (b. 1989) is an emerging mixed-media artist whose work includes paintings, drawings, ceramics, and photographs of organic forms. Ventura depicts surrealist-inspired flowers, microbes, and a diversity of cellular entities. Phantasgmagorical lifeforms germinate through automatism in a process that mirrors natural evolution. Imagery is often directly inspired by anatomical botanical illustrations of flowers and fauna, as well as art historical still-life painting.The surfaces of Ventura’s work--whether it be oil paint, ceramic, charcoal, or oil pastel--are applied as a dense web of interlocking gestures, reminiscent of New York School Abstraction.
Ventura lives and works in Hoboken, NJ.
Further References / Rob Ventura