Madelyn Jordon Fine Art Bejeweled, Bewitched, Bedazzled

PRESS RELEASE

BEJEWELED, BEWITCHED, BEDAZZLED: A Holiday Exhibition
November 26, 2011 – January 14, 2012

Madelyn Jordon Fine Art is delighted to present “Bejeweled, Bewitched, Bedazzled,” a holiday group exhibition on view November 26, 2011 through January 14, 2012. With a special focus on art with meditative qualities in the midst of a season defined by chaos, the show will feature signature works by a range of artists, including Makoto Fujimura, Stanley Boxer, Donald Sultan, Susan Wides, Eugene Healy, Anne de Villemejane, Abraham Walkowitz, Larry Horowitz, John Beerman and Pablo Picasso.

The show will present works in several mediums, including painting, drawing, photography, collage, and mixed media.

Makoto Fujimura works within the tradition of abstract painting and Nihonga, a medieval Japanese painting practice. He combines sumi ink, used in East Asian brush painting, with pure gold, silver and ground minerals, such as malachite, cinnabar, and vermilion to create unmistakable work. The work on view is a shimmering, multi-layered painting that attempts to span the void between transitory and eternal worlds.

Stanley Boxer is heavily influenced in the Modernist tradition and a superb manipulator of surfaces. In Memoireofmoment, Boxer combines diverse materials, such as glitter and wood, with generous quantities of oil paint to create sensual mélanges of texture and color. His work is represented in major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Donald Sultan, a prominent painter, printmaker and sculptor, is known for slightly abstract still-life compositions. He commonly uses bold, bright colors and deep black forms, as seen in Black and Red Poppy, which also employs his signature use of unorthodox media in its tar paper and plaster make-up. His work is included in many prestigious collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Australian National Gallery, and the Walker Art Center.

Susan Wides explores layers of human participation in communal spaces through the transformation of public activities into intimate scenes. Central Park [February 2010] was a part of her recent solo exhibition at the Hudson River Museum and one of her more well known works, as it was the cover for the International Center of Photography’s winter catalogue. Her work is in many collections, including Brooklyn Museum (NY), The Norton Museum of Art (FL) and the International Center of Photography (NY).

Eugene Healy illustrates abstract shore scenes in his works on view, orchestrating lines, shapes and colors into particular combinations to evoke ecstasy. This use of significant form, a theory coined by British art critic Clive Bell in 1913, induces particular moods and feelings in the viewer, created by his employment of paint, sand, fabrics and pieces of window screens.

Anne de Villemejane focuses on a subdued rendering of nudes in her work of view. The emotional tension in Nu Dechire Blanc is developed through a sense of color and texture, and comes from her curiosity about the primacy of emotion and energy in life. As a collage, Nu Dechire Blanc explores the body through distortion and manipulation.

Abraham Walkowitz illustrated renowned dancer Isadora Duncan extensively throughout her life and after she died. The Dancer, part of these drawings considered the most comprehensive record to capture Duncan’s essential dance movements and style, utilizes minimal line and was executed from memory.

Larry Horowitz is a respected landscape painter working in the Plein Air tradition, whose paintings are alluring and tend to elicit a range of emotions in the viewer. Horowitz’s works reflect a careful attention to traditional methods and materials. While The Clothesline reflects a careful attention to traditional methods and materials in his signature application of paint – thickly painted impasto, palette knife carved surfaces – Horowitz’s colors are contemporary. Stylistically, this work bridges the divide between representation and near abstraction.

John Beerman is a master of painting the American countryside. As a student of the school of the great Hudson River landscape painters, light is the presiding presence in Eastern Sky. His guileless wonder produces a memorable view of the serene beauty of nature. This peaceful, almost dreamlike scene floats off the medium surface, delivered with technical mastery and self-evident care. He delivers visual and emotional findings to the viewer, characterized by the full power of nature and devoid of human intervention. His work has been acquired by the collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; Brooklyn Museum, NYC; Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland OH; Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN; Farnsworth Museum, Rockland ME; and Neuberger Museum, Purchase NY.