On Thursday, June 20th, a group of artists will open exhibitions for the Main Galleries, Sculpture Garden and Carriage House. Craig Olson's new paintings will be in the front galleries. Jon Isherwood will have three new works in the sculpture garden. The Carriage House will have paintings by Jenny Snider, Gregory Amenoff, Peter McCaffrey and Jason Stopa. The works will be on display through July 14 with a reception for the artists on Saturday, June 22nd from 6:00 until 8:00 p.m.

"These works stand as an evocation of the image as a threshold leading to new dimensions of understanding. Images, living images, are more than mere data; they are vital seeds, spirited carriers of possibility. They both limit us, and open us up: it is this particular image, it grounds us in this experience, and yet, through them, something calls out from beyond evoking a deeper reality. Follow the image outside the box of meaning and we find ourselves, like Sun Ra, Between Two Worlds. Not transition from one place to another, but a place in and of itself." - Craig Olson 2013

Jon Isherwood's exhibition is extended for a second month. The exhibition consists of three hand-carved sculptures in granite and marble. Standing at eight feet tall, the sculptures are among Isherwood’s largest works to date, and represent the latest development of his ongoing investigation of form and pattern.

Isherwood’s latest work represents a study in contrasts between monumental scale and intimate detail, movement and stillness, light and dark. The sculptures’ imposing size and unyielding hardness of material are manipulated by Isherwood to suggest dynamic bodily movement and soft surface texture. The forms seem to twist and turn back upon themselves as if pulled in two directions at once. While their shapes are similar, each sculpture represents a very different approach to this idea. The Move’s On, in black granite, uses boldly incised lines to suggest a torqued surface in tension with itself. Siren, in white marble, has a soft, almost feather-like pattern. The red granite Prophecy features a free-form pattern of drawn lines that swell and compress as they play across the sculpture’s skin.

Isherwood’s work has been widely exhibited in public museums and private galleries around the US, Canada, and Europe. He is the recipient of a Jerome Foundation Fellowship, a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of New York at Plattsburgh. His sculpture has recently been exhibited at The Today Museum, Beijing, China; The Decordova Sculpture Park and museum MASS; and in Belgrave Square, London, UK. He has had more than 20 solo exhibitions, including Reeves Contemporary in NYC, John Davis Gallery in NYC; Maiden Lane Exhibition Space in NYC; the C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore; Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park and Museum in Hamilton, OH; and the Sculpture Court in Southampton, NY. He has been featured in many group exhibitions, including the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Italy; The McNay Museum, San Antonio, TX; The Derby City Museum, Derby, UK; and Kunsthalle, Manheim, Germany. His work can be found in more than 22 public collections. Isherwood’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, ArtNews, The Washington Post, The New York Sun, Sculpture Magazine, Partisan Reviews, The Philadelphia Enquirer, and in The Times and The Guardian, UK. He has made personal appearances on shows featuring his work, including WAMC Public Radio and The Culture Show, BBC Television, UK. He has lectured at numerous colleges and universities in the U.S. and Europe.

"My love of the movies was learned first from my mother. But it also springs from a wonderful historical coincidence: cinema was born with my grandparents; and the lives of the Russian Constructivists mirror, on a tragic and grand scale, the more prosaic story of my family in America. In foreign films, I hear echoes of voices from my childhood.

Montage of Attractions, is a quote from the great Soviet film director, Sergei Eisenstein, who used it several times to define and redefine his goals–as a stage designer and director¬–and then as a filmmaker. Embedded in this painting are scraps of paper, with writing by my mother, my sister and me, from the last years of our mother’s life. Drawings of 1921 Soviet Agitprop Trains and other early painted and drawn pieces on linen and canvas, including a line of dancing girls and a trolley car, are collaged onto the painting surface. Lyuba Popova’s set and costumes for V.E. Meyerhold’s production of Krommelink’s The Magnanimous Cuckold are quoted in the black field at the base of the painting. And, if you look very closely, you will find the pram that rolled down the Odessa steps in Potemkin." - Jenny Snider 2013

"In the summer of 2012 I spent six weeks in Paris living in a small apartment and running a special program for Columbia University. I decided that it might be a good time to work on paper to develop some new images to investigate later when I returned home. I rather arbitrarily chose to work in colored pencils on a hard surfaced paper thinking that a change in medium (and one I was unfamiliar with) would engender a fresh approach to imagery and surface. Upon my arrival, and quite fortuitously, I discovered that the Musée d’Orsay was featuring a large exhibition of their extensive collection of Symbolism, an art movement and period in history to which I have always been attracted. The d’Orsay is rich in Symbolist painting from Puvis to Moreau and finally to the “prince of dreams” Odilon Redon---my lifetime favorite of the movement. The Symbolists offered lush color, decorative borders and frames, perfumed atmospheres and most of all glimpses into half-lit imaginary worlds and aligned themselves not only with my own sensibility and mood but also with the process of developing images with layer upon layer of colored pencil. The drawings then developed into paintings upon my return to my upstate studio. It has been a new beginning. My secret title for this group of drawings and paintings is Fin de Siècle but in the end that title seems redundant, as hopefully that period is embedded in the imagery, color, surface and atmosphere." - G.A. 2013

"I’ve been thinking about the lives of animals and how they connect with mine. Recently, I held the body of Bloom, my terrier, as she lay dying. Her failing heart had filled her tiny chest cavity and she labored with each breath. When her final moments came, I felt her spirit pass through my hands into the night, intangible yet real.

In this recent collection of paintings and drawings, the animal form is a physical ground for exploring an abstract space. The skeleton, horn or hoof is the armature for the body and soul of a living creature. Leaving the drawing of these parts unfinished exposes a space where the paint then becomes flesh and blood, as it passes through air and sky. The tension between the delicacy of a line and the muscularity of the paint, side by side, creates the push and pull that interests me. A gash of gold leaf consecrates this union.

The dilemma of whether the animal/figure will survive this tension remains the question for me. Is pure abstract painting enough to sustain my spirit? For me, it feels like letting go of something I love…" - Peter McCaffrey 2013

"My multi-media paintings hover between representational and abstract approaches. I use a variety of mediums to create surface tension between a mysterious image and the physical sensation of materials. I'm after a sense of play, formal innovation and the essence of a thing. When I feel I've captured those elements, I feel the work is complete." - Jason Stopa 2013

John Davis Gallery
362 1/2 Warren Street
Hudson (NY) 12534 United States
Tel. +1 (518) 8285907
art@johndavisgallery.com
www.johndavisgallery.com

Opening hours
Thursday - Monday from 11am to 5pm
And by appointment