THE ARTISTS OF BEACON, NEW YORK: SOME GUIDING LIGHTS

Beacon, New York  is home to one of the great art communities in the state. This bucolic town on the Hudson River is also the location of Dia: Beacon, the iconic museum housing what some consider the ultimate collection and settings for minimalist art.  Let me tell you, Beacon doesn’t end at Dia. Extraordinary as that place is, there is a vast group of artists thriving within the outreaching areas of the town, and making art that is imaginative, personal -- thought-provoking as well as provocative. During a recent trip to enjoy the BEACON OPEN STUDIOS TOUR, I was thrilled to experience the town’s wonderful Main Street – coincidentally on that weekend celebrating the annual Spirit of Beacon Day.  And celebration it was in every corner.  Food, music, performance, art, dancing, singing – you name it, it was out in force.  Our first stop, at HUDSON BEACH GLASS, -- an amazing gallery of wonderful glass art -- enabled us to get a preview of the work and artists on the larger studio tour’s gallery locations.  Over 80 artists participated in the event this year, and it was an eye-opener for me in every way. Not only did I encounter a lot of exciting new art, but I was also the recipient of the community’s warmth and welcome.  The main gallery site was in the old Beacon High School – now in reuse as a perfect location to gather many artists all at one time, with the classrooms acting as workspace and exhibition space at once. Art, in my opinion, should always have a home in a school.  This studio tour proved to engage not only the adult, but also the many young children experiencing art for perhaps the first time. The spirit of the artists, and the breadth of their work and ideas was an exceptional experience.  One visit is not enough, by any means, and this town is a destination worth the trip.  Of the many artists whose work I saw, I could only choose a very few to spotlight here. I wish I could write about every one of them. For a complete listing of the artists on the Tour, go the Beacon Open Studio Tour site for individual works and websites in more detail.  But hey, even though this tour is over, you won’t want to miss the next one. Besides, these artists are around throughout the year. Get to know their work, and get to know them.

Emil Alzamora  (Above) I first encountered the work of Emil Alzamora during a show of his sculpture at the Artbreak Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I came away thinking about the human form in a completely different capacity.  Alzamora has a stunning ability to manipulate his materials into emotional and conceptual ideas, which reshape our concepts of what the body is, and what it becomes during the time we try to live within it. Working in a wide array of sculptural materials, Alzamora brings a sense of philosophical beauty to each of his works, though the singular aspect of all of them is an attention to the force of the flesh in all its forms.  In his online statement, Alzamora says: 

“The human form is a constant within my work. I am interested in exploring what it means to inhabit one, often exaggerating or distorting different aspects of the form to reveal an emotional or physical situation, or to tell a story about a predicament or an occurrence. Limitation and potential are as human as the flesh, yet hardly as tangible. In my works, I try to make visible this interaction.”  Also see my essay “Bodies of Wisdom and Misdemeanor” on Emil Alazmora’s work at: http://theartpoint.blogspot.com/2010_03_26_archive.html

Richard Bruce  When I first came upon Richard Bruce’s walnut-oil ink paintings, I could not place their medium.  They seemed as if they were circular worlds somewhere in space -- planet surfaces perhaps, depicting shadows and seas.  Yet, up close these pristine and sumptuous abstractions are filled with gesture, thought and intent. their delicacy belies the difficult and precise hand that created their almost Da Vinci-like execution. The inks themselves are a wonderful array of color – almost purple to deep brown, to lights of flesh and watery brunette.  The work evokes simple, yet elemental qualities of the ground, as well as the sky. They have a sense of the environmental, as imagined through a perceptive eye.  Also known for his ethereal landscapes, which reflect the air and light of the Hudson Valley, and reiterate the great Hudson School painters, Bruce has said of his work: "My paintings have been heavily influenced by the Abstract Expressionist painters and, during my years in Manhattan I had the great fortune to work with and get to know many of the greats including Joan Mitchell, Milton Resnick and Louise Fishman. Abstract elements are still incorporated in my work, however, now my paintings are much more informed by the area in which I live and the ethereal beauty of the Hudson Valley. Recently I have realized how little my paintings actually have to do with landscape. In fact, most landscape painting holds very little interest for me. I am not trying to create literal depictions of specific places, but am more interested in capturing the experience of the landscape, of being in nature and the inherent spirituality found there. The paintings are very much about the river and the water. When I am not painting I spend a great deal of time kayaking on the river or hiking on the many trails in the area. I am also very concerned about the preservation and restoration of this environment and wonderful resource." In his new works, Bruce continues to explore the essence of nature and its abstractions. The resulting imagery is a testament to his love of both.

 

Peter Iannarelli   The simple objects of the everyday – brooms, lamps, bulbs, hammers, plastic spoons, and pencils – become objects of affection for Peter Iannarelli.  Visually garrulous and completely engaging, his work and studio calls you into its dense, purposely cluttered space in which a huge array of pieces in various states of completion vie for your attention.  The effect is that you have stepped into the other rabbit hole that Alice was not lucky enough to fall into. Nothing is what it seems to be, though everything seems to be recognizable. Iannarelli is a ringmaster of the visual; his conceptions are congenial and cerebral at once. One must walk around everything – viewpoint is everything: what you perceive from one side will completely change when you move to the other. Walking in circles was a pleasure in this studio.  Side by side, in groups, or alone, these objects become conversations with the viewer, in the most wonderful of visual dialogues. Of his work, the artist states: “Working from the ready-made tradition, I take the objects of everyday life and tinker with them, plumbing both their logic and abstraction to create a dialogue that reveals a subtext that is perhaps their real, alternate or sublime intention. Familiarity becomes the portal to experience and objects are cast from the common place to the status of artifact. The pieces become, in part, an archive of the things we surround ourselves with and how we felt. Viewers are asked to enter a narrative with attentiveness to how the objects of everyday transcend their perfunctory function and engender a new understanding.  My work is about relationships and immediacy. Duality emerges as a common thread; working with multiples and sometimes couplets, I'm in search of a common denominator, a shared center or perfect balance. Primarily working from a conceptual practice my work also acknowledges the expressionistic dynamic producing emotional effect and subjectivism. It is this emotional essence that hints of an underlying soul, or if truly successful, reveals one completely.” Visit his website at: http://peteriannarelli.com/

Karlos Carcamo  The iconography of popular culture, Latino experience, bling and the life of the city streets mesh to become objects of distinctive personal vision in Karlos Carcamo’s  vision. His evocations of cultural objects often meant to be negative – guns, knives, and handcuffs – are transmuted into symbols of personal emotion and spirit, which nonetheless do not diminish the impact of their original meanings and connotations.  Carcamo explores ideas in a wide range of objects and materials – painting, printing, sculpture, photography, and drawing – and he is consummate in choosing the exact medium for the message.  Mirrors, limousine blackout glass, metal mesh are conjoined with such things as police batons, bling necklaces, graffiti, beer cans, and bandanas to constitute complex new meanings when they are juxtaposed with one another, or made new by reconstruction.  Examples are his red and blue “Bandana Flag” pieces – their well-known fabric designs folded in the shape of triangles and then framed.  Though they are inspired by the red, white, and blue, there is a darker context here, when you realize that such triangular flags are given to widows at funerals. They become vitrines that evoke more than just patriotic formal design.  A horn-handled knife struck through the wall is collared with a dangling silver crucifix: the effect is mesmerizing and startling at the same time. What each object connotes separately is now combined to produce completely new contexts.  Carcamo’s wall work, using the pioneering graffiti work of such artists as TAKI, are here in the artist's hands transformed into erasures – evoking censorship -- painted out squares of white demolish the calligraphy of the street. The interruption becomes an absence as well as abstraction.  This is all work of intelligent, intensely considered execution, as well as deeply felt conviction.  Seen together in one space, the combination makes your hair stand on end.  You can see his work in detail at: http://karloscarcamo.blogspot.com/
 

Eleanor White  Using playing cards as her ground of medium, White produces kaleidoscopic and beautiful works of precision and elegance. Cutting into the surfaces of the card designs in very detailed and specific ways, she produces a surface on which the remaining color and design are the arena for abstractions, which when combined in circular or rectangular sets, create fields of repetitive, flowing line. It is work of patience and attention.  When coupled with gold leaf, the effect is regal; the limited symbols are those of the cards numbers and houses: Diamonds, clubs, hearts, spades, Kings, Queens, Jacks.  White also uses her cutting work to create delicate sculptures of the cards: Works such as “Clubs (at right)” become a field of black shamrock-like flowers -- literally wallflowers -- connected by thin lines of the card design in red. Adding and subtracting to the original design structure, White produces an extraordinary array of combinations in which to express her imagery.  In the work “Card Variations”, the artist has scraped away the surface to only small areas of the cards. Side by side, they become a tarot of personal abstraction and visual language, with no need for understanding other than the sheer beauty of the piece.  Other sculptural ideas that White engages include the conceptual and the common placed together: Hair Pillow and Pin Suit are wonderful examples that can be seen on her website at http://eleanorwhite.blogspot.com/

Grey Zeien  Color and its potential for exuberance is the tattoo and signature of this painter and collagist. In canvases that are richly layered with paint and visual information, Zeien's surface textures are an element of force within vibrant compositions.  In works such as the extraordinary triptych “Persistence of Memory”, the brushwork is visceral and dynamic, the color structures lush and evocative. One looks at such paintings for hours and the eye still goes back for more. Geometry  is a ground for structure and resonating form and line. Gold leaf has the sensibility of armor as well as of light.  Early pieces in the collage series “Comix” utilize such celebrated personages as Flash, Archie and Veronica, The Hulk, and Charlie Brown -- who all happily collude to bring new comic meaning to the ubiquitous and the lusty. “The Big Bang” is the perfect take on what the hell is going to happen if we keep heading down the same nuclear roads.  In his series of photographs, Zeien’s eye for the accidental imagery found in the varied layering and tearing away of billboards, signs, and other structures are a suite of ephemeral imprints of time and its passing, and the coincidental beauty that results from it.  Such works as “Tabula Rasa”, “Venetian Construct”, “Flesh Eater”, and “Malpago” were favorites of mine. In his most recent work, soon to be seen in New York this month at Skylight Gallery , Zeien’s gold-leaf pieces steal the show as well as repay the viewer ten-fold.  I was particularly taken by new pieces which were splatter works – taking the remains of paint that had dried on his work table, Zeien adhered the minuscule fragments to adhesive-covered paper. The scintillating constructions have the delicacy of Flemish detail and color; the open air of the small universes they create on paper is magnetic. For more of Grey Zeien’s work, see his website at: http://www.greyzeien.com/.

Born in Nuremburg, Germany, Angelika Rinnhofer’s photographs limn the confluence of veracity and art historical fiction.  Depiction serves connotation in her luminous portraits of figures and faces of extraordinary presence.  These men and women take us into the past as they seemingly stare into the future. Rinnhofer’s eye is poised for the instant when the face becomes a mirror to our own. Her articulate and beautiful inferences to such artists as Durer, Da Vinci, Holbein, Caravaggio, and Vermeer, startle us all the more because of their implicit use of the contemporary gaze. In her Felsenfest (def: “to hold fast”) series, Rinnhofer combines martyrdom’s explicit punishments with science’s adamant experiments. It is a stunning presentation of the wars of faith and disbelief as depicted in religious history. Conjoined in tableaux of intensely lit and composed photographs, Rinnhofer’s subjects ask us to examine the past as well as the present.  Her “Menschenkunde” series of portraits, attract us with their pristine beauty and calm, yet remind us that the face as an historical document is transitory at best.  But one can not help but take pleasure in the beauty of these portraits, which have a mysterious clairvoyance about them: each of the subjects seem to be a memento mori, serenely, and knowingly, cautioning us about the vagaries of time.  To see more of Angelika Rinnhofer’s work, visit her website: http://www.angelikarinnhofer.com

ALL ARTWORK COPYRIGHT THE ARTISTS, 2010; USED WITH THEIR KIND PERMISSION. IMAGES, TOP TO BOTTOM: EMIL ALZAMORA: "MOTHER AND CHILD I"; RICHARD BRUCE: "SPHERE"; PETER IANNARELLI: "PENCIL BOX"; KARLOS CARCAMO: "BALANCING ACT (LOWER EAST SIDE); ELEANOR WHITE: "CLUBS"; GREY ZEIEN: "CYMBAL"; ANGELIKA RINNHOFER, FROM THE "FELSENFEST" SERIES.