This is a Group Show

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The featured works depict a myriad of ideas, ranging from the intimate representation of identity, the awareness of ecology, to the urgency and absurdity of social media. From systemic minimalism to surreal expressionism and abstraction, "This is a Group Show" conjures an improvisational fantasy space where imagination, reflection, and self-reinvention are collective phenomena.

In both sculpture and painting, material experimentation can be paramount. In a new mixed-media sculpture, Marisol Valencia returns to a series of works that seeks to understand the stress and the breaking point of materials. Pushing porcelain to the boundaries of its physical capabilities, her new work investigates the boundaries and connections between strength and vulnerability. 

A new painting by JCA reveals the artist’s investigation into color and form. Inspired by the attitude that is often associated with graffiti writers and street artists, JCA’s neo-pop representational work challenges the present-day meaning of authenticity and questions what it means to be authentic as an artist. Akin to contemporary artist Alex Katz, JCA’s work isolates and hyper focuses on the subjects in the work, highlighting the importance of the objects and their relationship to the viewer. 

Polish painter Paweł Dutkiewicz’s large-scale oil paintings continues to place him in the aesthetic realm of Agnes Martin and Ad Reinhardt as he liberates color from its objective context, communicating atmospheric light through application and composition. Dutkiewicz’s sublimated approach to painting results in an expansive, meditative body of work. Layers of beeswax and paint saturate each canvas to create nuances of tone that emerge as ethereal, floating spaces of color. 

Suggesting that the division between abstract and figurative exists on a spectrum rather than in a dichotomy, a number of new paintings on canvas explore a sense of place, personal narrative, and challenge societal standards. Ruhee Maknojia’s highly detailed, patterned paintings incorporate American and South Asian aesthetics and philosophies as a medium through which to raise questions about contemporary ethics, values, and power structures in an ever-growing global and interconnected world. Whereas Marcella Colavecchio inserts herself in art historical iconographies that have fascinated her since childhood, and which, due to her biological sex, hold conflicting connotations of ostracism and admiration. By recreating the figurative paintings in her own image, she removes the barriers to her inclusion. In doing so, she is able to explore gender roles, and how it has been shared by patriarchal, societal and cultural ideals of femininity. 

The larger-than-life abstract paintings by Josh Litos are in response to virtual spaces, such as social media outlets, that we occupy on a regular basis. Utilizing the color palette from an array of social media platforms, Litos is creating an alternative tangible space that, otherwise, would not exist for a virtual space. This gives the viewer the physical capabilities of existing in between the worlds of artificiality and reality.

Dave McClinton’s digital collages reconstruct the identity of the African American through an assemblage of numerous taken and found photographs. McClinton’s drive to create these compelling images is to continue the sparked conversation about the African American society in contemporary times, whilst simultaneously acknowledging the grim history of this community. These powerful works attract a deeper conversation among viewers and help visually define the history of African American culture. 

Düsseldorf based artist, Maxim Wakultschik’s small-format figurative paintings contain classical film noir characteristics, appropriating the 1950’s theme of ambiguity and mystery. The works combine a photo-like voyeurism through German expressionistic sensibilities reminiscent of the painter Gerhard Richter, whilst also paying a lip service to the classical veracity of painting. Each painting is set in a polished metal hardware that gives a suggestion of an airplane window, thus engaging the viewer between the outside world of the gallery space and the inside world of an airplane cabin.

Although the revolution of the digital age in fine art is continued by the works of Swiss artist Katja Loher and Dutch artist Hedwige Jacobs, there is a visually jarring juxtaposition between their works. Loher’s vibrantly complex Videosculptures are presented as organic sculptural forms, creating a nearly seamless fusion of the technological with the organic, reflecting the digital world of magic she creates. Each Videosculpture addresses ecological urgencies, such as the plight of pollinators, abuses of technology, and the future of humanity, while simultaneously drawing attention to the intrinsic beauty of the life sus­taining processes that support our planet. In contrast, Jacobs utilizes everyday materials (such as: pencils, markers on paper) to create simple black and white drawings that then “come alive for a few seconds” in her animations. In Jacobs’ animations, silhouetted characters scurry about like tiny ants and reconfigure themselves in endless variations drawn from everyday interactions. The artist is interested in the way the characters respond to one another and how they exist in the world. She seems both overwhelmed as well as inspired by the vastness of humanity and says, “It’s about isolation. We’re all alone, but we’re all together”. 

Systemic artists George Grochocki and HJ Bott create abstract paintings and sculptures based on self-employed algorithms and concepts. At 92 years old, Polish artist George Grochocki has based many of his dimensional works on a formulated system called Four Signs of Plane and Four Areas of Space. This mathematical approach to art with a limited color palette has produced sublime, balanced works that allow the viewer to appreciate not only the artwork itself but the space it occupies. The reserved state of his paintings combined with the elegant yet dramatic shadows that fall from his carved forms make each work irresistible to the viewer. Similarly, HJ Bott created his own system in 1972, named the Displacement-of-Volume (DoV), which employs a combination of basic and universal archetypes to make way for a “new” archetype system. Methodical yet intuitive, this body of work, stemming from this self-created system, displays the artist’s signature geometrically abstract shapes of rich and textured surfaces. Making his own polymer vinyl paints, Bott’s use of this industrial material gives the work an arduous layer, while color and movement give a sense of playfulness that speaks to the inventive nature of the work.