Martha Armstrong
Open By Appointment Only June 29 & 30
GALLERY HOURS:
Wednesday - Saturday, 10am - 5pm
Homage 1005A (Black Rose I), 48" x 48", Pigment Print On Canvas
Irene Mamiye: Fresh Kills
In Fresh Kills, Irene Mamiye addresses the unique philosophical implications of social media, technology, and the ubiquity of digital imagery. Mamiye playfully considers Roland Barthes’ philosophy in The Death of the Author by creating original works from freely available, often mass-distributed, visuals. The reanimation of this imagery marks a new stage in the lifecycle of an image, acting as the beautiful and vivacious, post-modern constructions of un-dead authors. This three-fold exhibition features digital collages, CNC-milled Plexiglas sculptures, and video shorts.
In her Homage series, Mamiye first amasses collections of Instagram posts. These appropriated images are then plugged into Photoshop to be manipulated and layered into something new. The final images are a mélange of public posts that have been recorded and recontextualized into collective digital tableaux; an original made from the ubiquitous. Similarly, the Ciphers works contain internal logic, code, and encryption that has been selectively manipulated to form the resulting Plexiglas assemblages. The transparent material acts as a real-world “filter”, or screen. The etched geometric patterns are intended to reference the pixilation and noise resulting from .jpeg compression. Adding another twist to the story of these constructions, Ciphers recently became DeCiphers on the blockchain as 1000 generatively created NFT’s which sold within days of the drop. The collection can be viewed on OpenSea.io.
Full Stop, 10" x 10", Oil And Silk Thread On Paper
Rita Bernstein: Touched
My work is small, spare, and reticent, a conscious choice. In a world where so much seems big, loud, and competing for attention, I value what is otherwise and regret that it is often overlooked. I am interested in how little one can say and still convey meaning.”
- Rita Bernstein
Quiet and mysterious, Bernstein’s work is a catalog of tactile experiences. The artist combines her distinctive mark-making with manipulation of the paper itself through pokes, probes, strokes, squeezes, and tickles. Some pieces suggest the pages of a book or journal with scratches and diagrams that appear almost, but not quite, decipherable. Others resemble scientific or medical procedures – a smear of vaguely biological material or a tenderly sutured laceration.
Touched presents a short survey of Bernstein’s current studio practice that includes individual framed works, diptychs and triptychs, an installation of calendar pages, and a book of stains. Each component provides a space for contemplation and empathy. Tactile sensation is, perhaps, our most primal sense, and Bernstein’s compassionate handling connects to a deeply felt shared experience of benevolence and care, the most basic definition of humanity.
Val Rossman featured in John Thornton's Val Rossman, Unexpected Interference, New Paintings at Gross McCleaf
Artist Val Rossman exhibits two different but related bodies of paintings at her 3rd solo show at Gross McCleaf. She talks about her work, both the process and the philosophy that animates her.
Benjamin Passione & Mickayel Thurin featured in John Thornton's Family of Artists, Ben Passione, Mickayel Thurin, and the Legendary Maurice
Artists Ben Passione and Mickayel Thurin are a young couple trying to raise their son Maurice through one of the most difficult periods in memory. I got a chance to film both of their recent exhibitions and talk to, and film them, at their home in North Philadelphia.
Michael Gallagher featured in John Thornton’s Beauty and Consolation, The Art of Michael Gallagher
America and the world have been suffering through a prolonged and miserable darkness, and Michael Gallagher’s paintings of joy, color and light bring hope to all who witness them. And they align with my own favorite aesthetic, a perfection of idealized forms and shapes, with an abraded and disfiguring surface. It’s the human need for perfect beauty, stymied by the limiting realities of this world. The irony being the beauty is made more poignant through the world’s grinding sorrows.
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to host the first major retrospective of Philadelphia-native Morris Blackman. SAVE FOR FUTURE USE features two galleries filled with sculptures, paintings, drawings, and more from Blackman’s prolific practice through three distinct periods of formal investigation.
Drawings and a small, painted self-portrait are among the earliest pieces in the exhibit and attest to Blackman’s draftsmanship and artistic training. His softly contoured graphite drawings depict various casts and statues that Blackman studied during his arts training. His self-portrait presents a young man in front of a field of bright yellow paint. His face in shadow, a critical gaze reveals the discerning and determined personality of Blackman as a young artist.
“Much of my practice focuses on the vast wave of images that collectively circulate online. By the nature of ‘showing and sharing’ visual culture, images become orphaned from their intent and authorship, and distinctions between originals and copies are lost.”
-Irene Mamiye
In Fresh Kills, Irene Mamiye addresses the unique philosophical implications of social media, technology, and the ubiquity of digital imagery. Mamiye playfully considers Roland Barthes’ philosophy in The Death of the Author by creating original works from freely available, often mass-distributed, visuals. The reanimation of this imagery marks a new stage in the lifecycle of an image, acting as the beautiful and vivacious, post-modern constructions of un-dead authors. This three-fold exhibition features digital collages, CNC-milled Plexiglas sculptures, and video shorts.
Spontaneous bursts of gestural expression meet carefully planned and executed drafting in Val Rossman’s new body of abstract works. Unexpected Interference features two varieties of exploration from Rossman’s multi-faceted painting practice of layered geometric compositions and energetically marked, achromatic configurations. Each variation of Rossman’s approach combines elements of chance and moments of orchestration, both of which are fundamental to her pursuits. Rossman finds her works to be analogous to life’s common challenges, and it is in the tension created by these opposing strategies where Rossman’s work flourishes and meaning is found...
Amy Brady: Please tell me about your latest series, Ardens Mundi. What does that title stand for, and how does the exhibition speak to the climate crisis?
Maureen Drdak: Ardens Mundi is Latin for Burning Worlds. The series presents the many faces of global warming as it manifests across the planet, with each work presenting a distinct cataclysmic phenomenon. The title also refers to the transmutational power of burning in the spiritual sense, in that humanity has agency—humanity can choose to purify itself from its worst addictions. The series is reflective of my long study and work in the Himalayan country of Nepal, a country and region where the conversation between spirit and matter is of long and particular intensity—and of special relevance to our rapidly heating planet.
“…the idea that a shape/form can occupy multiple spatial conditions and potential readings keeps me engaged in both making and looking… a Duck/Rabbit thing, rooted in the complexities and pleasure of perception.”
-Michael Gallagher
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to present, INFINITION, a solo exhibition of bold and colorful abstractions by Michael Gallagher.
Enigmatic, delightfully playful and bold, Gallagher’s new works at first appear as accomplished abstractions that reference modernist forms. Painted biomorphic shapes swirl around the surface, producing a centrifugal force generated from the center of the painting outward. Texture and varied paint application break the solidity of flat planes of color creating implied space in the composition. The shapes then alternately poke into those spaces and push out, shifting the relationship between what is considered the figure and what is the ground.
“I think everything is in there: events, people I know, stories, architecture, music…I’m a big believer in coincidence, synchronicity, and numerology: it’s all about how things get funneled and filtered into a linear, transcendent expression.”
-Thomas Paul Raggio
Gross McCleaf is pleased to exhibit a new body of hard-edged abstractions by Thomas Paul Raggio in his first solo show with the gallery. This exhibition, titled In the Valley, features Raggio’s signature combination of carefully organized lines and stripes, meticulously painted in acrylic. While non-objective, the painted bars create harmonious color vibrations that ripple across each canvas. Crisscrossing diagonals offer geometry, movement, and balance...
“I have a longing for a certain beauty that’s hard to describe, but it’s usually associated with summer colors. My desire for this summertime feeling seems inexhaustible, and though I’ve been trying for many years, I don’t feel like I am ever really satisfied.”
- Kurt Moyer
For over a decade, Kurt Moyer’s work has combined his love of nature with his reverence for art history. Born in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Moyer spent much of his youth exploring the Barnes Collection in Merion, Pennsylvania. Moyer now resides in rural New York near Rochester where he spends his time plein air painting from the beginning of spring until late fall. These passions converge in Moyer’s new abstract paintings on view at Gross McCleaf...
In “Deaf Republic,” allegoric poems that rail against violence and military oppression, Ilya Kaminsky created a young deaf martyr and a community that protested with sign language.
The collection of poems, published in 2019, is a story that is meaningful not just for the Eastern European country that Kaminsky envisioned, but also for any oppressed place.
The American figurative painter James Stewart, who lives in western Pennsylvania, envisioned “Deaf Republic” taking place in Weimar, Germany, and created a body of paintings to reflect and illustrate the poems...
