ART 3 gallery is pleased to present A Brief Gospel For Our Times, an installation featuring works by Joe Amrhein, Dan Bainbridge, William Corwin, Andre von Morisse, Carin Riley, Hazel Lee Santino. On view at ART 3 gallery, 109 Ingraham Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn. The show opens on Saturday February 18 - March 26, 2017. Gallery hours: Wed-Sat. 12-6PM, Sun. 1-5PM. The opening will take place on Sunday, February 19, from 1-5PM. A BRIEF GOSPEL FOR OUR TIMES is an installation evolving around truth, memory, perception, and the sacred. In a pale blue room, lined with a gold thread, a large abstract mural temple greets the visitor, while on the frieze, words unfold, relevant to our very recent History. “A brief gospel For Our Times” hints at where we are today in our history and where we are going.

Joe Amrhein, known for his use of text and font icons as his primary subject, has painted around the room key phrases that elaborate with deep relevance about the current state of affairs in the USA.

Dan Bainbridge, a multi-disciplinary artist who makes mixed-media objects, created a “baby Jesus figure with a woman’s face”, floating serenely on an empty blue wall.

Carin Riley, who draws ethereal graceful and fluid white forms, painted a large mural with two abstract figures influenced by Caryatids, a name given to a sculpted female figure in ancient Greek architecture. The mural gives the hint of a temple with an open door to our distant past reflecting Riley’s passion for mythology and vanished ancient cultures.

William Corwin, sculpture, Forget me Not, represents a seashell emerging from matter. Seashells, especially the scallop, is the symbol of baptism in Christianity or fertility as exemplified in the renaissance paintings of Venus, the Roman Goddess of fertility and love. As Saul Ostrow described in artcritical “the work of Corwin is an attempt to make sense of the existential appeal of the ontological and the mythic”. Hazel Lee Santino piece, “They Build Us Out Of Flowers and Return Us to the Ground”, 2016, studies the points where polarities within nature meet: strength and fragility, beauty and brutality, humanity and the wild. At these intersections, the distinctions unravel and entwine--symbiotic. Andre von Morisse, has two small paintings in the show. One, of his mother holding him as a child with a snake around his neck (taken from a photograph that was published in his native Norway in 1968 and made the news there at the time), reminding us of a controversial contemporary Madonna & Child. His other painting of “Miss Atomic Bomb - 1957” is a scary comment about our history and the insanity of men using beauty pageants in the 50’s to sell the normalization of violence.

Joe Amrhein (American, b. 1953 in Sacramento, CA. Lives and works in New York City). As a former sign painter, Joe Amrhein uses text and font icons as his primary subject, pulled out from monthly periodicals like Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, etc, the hyperbolae; key phrases that try to elaborate on the where, when, and how aspect of the art they are describing. In the show at ART 3, Amrhein uses text and words to reflect on the present political situation in the USA, using very “A Propos” words that describe the overall frustrations of many. Amrhein work has been exhibited in the US and Europe in solo and group exhibitions at Yossi Milo Gallery (NY, NY), Jochen Hempel Galerie (Berlin, Germany), Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany), Leytonstone Center for Contemporary Art (Leytonstone, UK), and The Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College (Collegeville, PA). Amrhein is also founder and co-director of Pierogi Gallery. His work has been exhibited in the US and Europe in solo and group exhibitions at Yossi Milo Gallery (NY, NY), Jochen Hempel Galerie (Berlin, Germany), Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany), Leytonstone Center for Contemporary Art (Leytonstone, UK), and The Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College (Collegeville, PA). Amrhein is also founder and co-director of Pierogi Gallery.

Dan Bainbridge (American, b. 1976 in Dubuque, Iowa, lives and works in New York, NY). Tampering with Western mythology, childhood fantasies, and our celebrity-obsessed popular culture, Dan Bainbridge creates mixed-media objects, installations, and assemblages. He uses found images and objects to create eerie mythological creatures. In Unicorn (2013), a glowing crystal is thrust into a pink stuffed horse, its tip sticking out garishly from its forehead. Glowing crystals also figure as teats of She Wolf Reading Light (2013), with its distinct reference to the mythical Roman beast. Bainbridge is also active as a performance artist; he co-founded collectives Monkey Mop Boy and French Neon (an artist collective, a salon, and nomadic gallery). Dan Bainbridge had numerous exhibitions as a student at the Illinois State University in Normal, IL, where he graduated with MFA in Studio Art (2006). His works have been featured in many group shows in New York since he moved to the city in 2006.

Andre Von Morisse (Norwegian, b. 1966 in Oslo, Norway, lives and works in New York, NY). Von Morisse is a conceptual painter, interested in exploring aspects of human psychology and how we interact with the world. With his work End of a New Dawn, reviewed by Jonathan Goodman in Art in America (Oct. 2005, p.180), he won the Best New Contemporary Artists Award 2005 at the Kunstnerenes Hus Museum in Oslo, Norway. End of a New Dawn explores relationship between painting and photography “reversing" the traditional roles of the two mediums by using paintings as the starting point for an elaborate and intricate photographic process. Andre von Morisse was born in Oslo, Norway in 1966 and came to America in 1978. In 1990, he graduated cum laude from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA and moved to New York in 1991. His works were featured in many group shows in galleries and museums in the US, and he had solo exhibitions with McKenzie Fine Art (2005 & 2003), and James Graham and Sons (2000, 1997) in New York, NY. Reviewed in the Art News (2007), Art in America (2005), New York Magazine (2003), Artnet (2000), and Review (1997), his art has also been often featured by Norway’s main dailies Aftenposten and VG, Kunst art magazine (2013), as well as Norwegian-American newspaper, Norway Times. Von Morisse’s paintings are held in prominent private and corporate collections in the US.

Carin Riley (b. 1949 in New York, lives and works in New York). Riley works almost exclusively in painting and drawing and her motifs are often based on still lifes . An abstractionist who frequently works on paper, Riley's production has been characterized by elegance, etherealness, fluidity and a beguiling reserve. Her palette is often restricted to a scale of grey, from white, near white to black combined with earth shades, although she has explored colors. While she remains an abstract artist, Riley has experimented with figuration, her newest work sensitively poised between the abstract and the representational are influenced by her passion for the mythology and ancient cultures. Her work was featured in “Out of Line,” a group show at Slag Gallery in Chelsea in 2010 and exhibited in “Unfreedom” at the Smudajescheck Galerie in Ulm, Germany in 2011. She had a solo show at the Weber Fine Art Gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut in June, 2013 and a solo, “Adaptive Traits,” at the Smudajescheck Galerie in September-October, 2013. Her work is in several private and public collections including that of the Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection in Little Rock, Arkansas and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.

William Corwin is a sculptor and curator based in New York. He has curated exhibitions at Zurcher Gallery, Catinca Tabacaru, The Flushing Town Hall (a Smithsonian Affiliate), George and Jorgen Gallery in London and the Pickled Art Center in Beijing. In the Fall of 2016 he curated “I Cyborg” at Gazelli Art House in London and more. He has a monthly radio program on Clocktower Radio and writes regularly for Art Papers, Frieze and the Brooklyn Rail.

Hazel Lee Santino (b. 1989, raised on the lost Coast of California, currently based in Brooklyn). Santino’s work relies on the laborious replication of natural elements, either as small isolated paintings of objects or three-dimensional pieces. Santino has exhibited in Group shows and also is a curator currently acting as in-house curator for Brooklyn Fire Proof’s BFP Creative.