Friday, May 3, opening reception from 5 to 9 PM
Saturday, May 4, and Sunday, May 5, studios are open from 2 to 6 PM
On Saturday, from 12 to 1:30, Brooklyn Rail publisher and artist Phong Bui will be in conversation with painter Joyce Pensato
Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation
20 Jay Street, Suite 720, Brooklyn, NY, 11201
(718) 858-2244
The Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program has been going strong since 1991. Each year 16 artists (ranging from emerging to more established) are selected for one year of free studio space in Dumbo, Brooklyn. 2013 marks the 5th anniversary of the Space Program’s relocation across the river to Brooklyn – for 17 years the studios were housed in Tribeca. This year is no exception to the eclectic mix of painters, sculptors, video, and performance artists. The artists participating in the 2012-13 Space Program are: Lisa Beck, Pam Butler, Kris Chatterson, N. Dash, Amy Feldman, Robert Green, Vit Horejs, Gilbert Hsiao, Liz Magic Laser, Beverly McIver, Sam Messer, Douglas Melini, Jennifer Nuss, Erika Ranee, Hadieh Shafie, David Simons, Didier William, and Randy Wray.
N. Dash, Amy Feldman, and Douglas Melini are three Sharpe artists working at the limits of abstraction and the painted image. All three were included in the Abrons Art Center exhibition Decenter, a contemporary valentine to the radical spirit of the 1913 Armory Show. Dash is a formal maverick who moves between mediums with precision and wit; she works with photography, homemade dyes, graphite, linen, jute, and found objects. Her spartan minimalism and mystical/scientific approach to materials is reminiscent of the early 1970s work of Dorothea Rockburne. Recent group shows include Zach Feuer, Room East, and Gallery Joe in Philadelphia, and she will participate in Painting in Place, opening May 22 at the Famers and Merchants Bank in Los Angeles.
Feldman is also a devotee of the reduced palette – her sizable paintings are at once goofy and sturdy, like signs for an alien city glimpsed in passing on the highway. There is a rorschach test quality to her forms and muted grayscale; anything can appear if you look hard enough. Feldman’s new work will be on view with Blackston gallery at NADA NYC, May 10-12. Melini pursues a personal geometry that is both decorative and mandala-like. A self-described “hard-edge” painter, there is nonetheless a lot of soft fun to be had in his hypnotic blend of rich color and tight lines. All three, in their own language, are pursuing an approach to the two-dimensional surface that is open-ended and very receptive to the viewer’s visual meditation.
