RECENT STILL LIFE & SELECTED WORKS FROM THE DREAM SERIES “NAXOS”: NEW PAINTINGS BY TIM O’KANE AND PRINT: A GROUP EXHIBITION OF PRINTS AT PAGE BOND GALLERY, FRIDAY, May 2, 2014.
The Page Bond Gallery is pleased to present Recent Still Life & Selected Works From The Dream Series “Naxos”: New Paintings by Tim O’Kane and Print: A Group Exhibition of Prints featuring work by John Baldessari, Nell Blaine, Will Cotton, Shepard Fairey, Helen Frankenthaler, Mary Heilmann, Ellsworth Kelly, Wolf Khan, Kenneth Noland, Pat Steir, Donald Sultan, and Sue Williams. The Exhibition will be on view May 2 through May 31, 2014. A reception for the artists will take place Friday, May 2, 2014 from 7 to 9 PM.
Tim O’Kane is a Virginia-based photographer and painter known for his remarkable still lifes, based in classical realism, that playfully reference Dutch Renaissance and ancient Italian domestic painting. Cracked eggshells, dimpled oranges, striated feathers and stones, eggplants, and watermelons present themselves with such matter-of-fact realism and seductive beauty that they seem to invite the viewer to reach through the surface of the panel and pluck them. They nearly exceed realism to approach trompe l’oeil. Yet clues such as playful subject matter (including a pair of old sneakers and scoops of ice cream delightfully plopped onto a counter next to a vintage ice cream scooper) hint that despite the potential weight of the history of his chosen practice, O’Kane retains a sense of lightheartedness and jubilance in his work.
Pat Steir is a prolific American artist who has spent 40 years developing a method of making a kind of art that, “free of constraints, is liberating to experience.” She is best recognized for her loosely dripped and splashed “waterfall” works, which she began in the late eighties. Her work has been described as a conversation with the past, informed by her interest in art history and influenced by 19th Century Romanticism, Abstract Expressionism, Japanese Woodcuts, and Chinese landscape paintings of the Song and Tan dynasties. Steir’s continuous search for the essence of painting led her to the Zen influenced composer John Cage, who she met in 1980, and Minimalist painter Agnes Martin. She is an accomplished printmaker, and she has said that she makes her work with the attitude of a gymnast, “first the meditation, then the leap.”
Shepard Fairey received his BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. While at Rhode Island School of Design he created the Andre the Giant has a Posse sticker that transformed into the OBEY GIANT art campaign with imagery that has changed the way people see art and the urban landscape. His work has evolved into an acclaimed body of art which includes the 2008 “Hope” portrait of Barack Obama which can be found in the Smithonian’s National Portrait gallery.
Since the beginning of his career in 1989 he has exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, indoor and outdoor. His works are in the permanent collections of the MOMA, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Boston ICA, and many others.
