Beyond the Fray

CANDYCE BROKAW, ANNETTE CORDS, ANDREA COTE

CUI FEI, PAULINE GALIANA, MARIETTA HOFERER, DANIELLE JACQUI,

ROSELINE KOENER, PATRICIA LEIGHTON, DEBBIE MA, MARIANNE WEIL

June 13- July 19, 2009

Co-curated by

Carole Jay + Glynis Berry

Reception: Saturday, June 13, 5-7 PM

Including a performance piece by Andrea Cote. hint: life line; heart line

at

art sites

651 West Main Street (Route 25), Riverhead, New York 11901 T: 631- 591-2401

http://www.artsitesgallery.com

Gallery Hours: Thursday –Sunday, 12-5 PM.

For group tour information and additional hours call 631-591-2401

Beyond the Fray displays the work of eleven artists, all who use texture in unexpected ways. From delicate white-on-white constructions to sumptuous layers of paint on collaged pieces, this show demonstrates the range of the visually tactile. Texture creates experiences and reactions. It is intimate, tempting one to touch. It breathes life into the iconic.

CANDYCE BROKAW, who started the Survivor’s Art Foundation in 1997, is an artist uses texture, through pattern and thickly applied tube paint, to give power to her expressive works. Her themes relate visual density to emotional experience, stemming from therapeutic explorations of physical abuse.

ANNETTE CORDS, born in Germany, has shown extensively, here and in Europe. The daughter of a physicist, she has been drawn to fundamentals of science while pulling materials for collages from daily life. She states, “Through the physicality of painting and the application of a process, I explore themes present in our fluid and interconnected world. Looking at the ways technology and biology interact and influence one another, I draw on the reciprocal relationship between the organic and non-organic and let it shape my work.”

ANDREA COTE, a multi-disciplinary artist, has shown her work coast-to-coast, including numerous museums. She was recently awarded the 2009 Studio Immersion Fellowship from the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. In her work Andrea questions the boundaries that have traditionally divided artistic disciplines, taking on multiple roles using her own body as subject, object, and medium. In these works, texture varies from actual inclusion of hair, to its visual translation, to printing directly from her body. She will also execute a performance piece at the opening. Visitor participation is encouraged.

CUI FEI Growing up in China, Cui witnessed radical, social and cultural change. Using the textures of thorns and tendrils to create implied manuscripts, she turns to nature as the origin of universality. She states, “In response to a continually changing outside world, I seek the underlying essence of our lives, something that is real and permanent, which cannot be altered by social, political, cultural, or geographic conditions.”

PAULINE GALIANA, from France, now lives and works in New York. Galiana describes her work as a kind of “survival kit”. In an act of willful economy, she recasts and recycles pieces from her own work. Her sticker collages record the passing consumption of food, medicine and culture, in an intense and time-consuming way. She helps the ephemeral to survive.

MARIETTA HOFERER, a German-born, U.S.A.- based artist subtly uses tape and light pencil lines to explore possibilities of the grid, with the hints of serendipity. Isabelle Dervaux, curator at the Morgan Library & Museum describes Hoferer’s work, “Marietta Hoferer’s collages made out of clear tape are based on a regular, modular composition of symmetrical patterns arranged into a grid format. Yet, minute differences in the size and texture of the tape affect its reflectivity, producing endless variations in the luminosity of the drawing, whose surface changes constantly under the eyes of the viewer like the surface of water.”

DANIELLE JACQUI’s vibrant drawings and textile collages fill every available space with color and texture as she depicts utopian visions. She can easily spend three years on the same piece of embroidery. Her artistic creations spread to every part of her environment, filling walls, wrapping chairs and encasing whole buildings. A French “l’Artiste Singulier, she is an ardent feminist who has shown extensively in France and is included in the Folk Art Museum and American Visionary Art Museum.

ROSELINE KOENER, a Belgian artist influenced by African art, forms textured collages of fabric and paper that seem fully spontaneous bursts of color and joy. But this expressiveness is rooted in a deep knowledge of art history and archeology, groomed since childhood as a collector’s daughter. With international sensibility and exposure, she focuses on sharing insights, sparking spirituality, and fostering the creative impulse. Her works are visceral; the textures sensual.

PATRICIA LEIGHTON, a Scottish artist now living in the U.S.A., has been creating major site-specific public art commissions in the United States and Europe since the 1980’s. Influenced by the natural formations of the Scottish hills, mountains, and ancient sites, she seeks that same intangible presence in her sculptures. The works are pulled from the past and filled with animistic energy. The pieces in this show reflect the monumentality of their inspiration, but with humbleness of woven textures..

DEBBIE MA, born in the Philippines, is both a graphic and fine artist, whose designs have graced the products of most of the leading cosmetic companies. Ma takes basic shapes and, through the power of her hand, imbues them with variation and strength. After having studied in the Philippines, Parsons School of Design, School of Visual Arts, Barcelona and at the China Institute, her works reflect a respect for the knowledge and skill of the masters, but then take on an abstraction all her own.

MARIANNE WEIL, an educator and sculptor, develops rich texture and original patinas in her bronze sculptures executed using the lost-wax system. Her unique works often reference ancient cultures, such as Neolithic sites. Weil has received numerous awards for her abstract bronze sculptures, including a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant, and most recently, a competitive commission for the Sisters of St. Dominic and the Water Mill Village Association.