McKenzie Fine Art: Translucent

55 Orchard Street, New York, New York 10002 212 989 5467 fax 212 989 5642

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	Translucent June 23 - August 12, 2017
	Translucent examines how artists exploit the inherent nature of materials to achieve translucency in their work. The exhibition features painting, sculpture and photographs by the following artists: Andrea Belag, Michelle Benoit, Freddy Chandra, Christopher Dunlap, James Lecce, Shane McAdams, Doreen McCarthy, Maureen McQuillan, Shari Mendelson, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Erin O’Keefe, Fran O'Neill, Rob de Oude, Gary Petersen, Don Voisine, and Laura Sharp Wilson. Andrea Belag works in oil, applying layers of saturated and intense color with wide brushes to create a fluidly rhythmic and structured composition. Don Voisine’s multiple layers of matte and glossy ultramarine blue oil paint are applied within a reductive geometric format, giving the illusion of endless space. Rob de Oude weaves multiple lines of oil color, creating Op-like pulsations and a translucent center. Using her arms and hands, Fran O’Neill applies her oil paint in muscular swooping strokes of jewel-like colors, while James Lecce pours and pools contrasting translucent and opaque layers of acrylic polymer emulsion to create pulsing and flowing imagery. Also working with acrylic polymer, Maureen McQuillan intersperses undulating white ink lines with pure ink colors to create great depth and unexpected color combinations that emerge from multiple layers of color on a clear medium. Shane McAdams creates rich veils of color with distinct linear edges in his abstractions by combining blown ballpoint ink with heated clear resins. In Christopher Dunlap’s painting, layered translucent geometries frame an opaque and patterned center, creating an overall architectonic vista. Also referencing architectural space are Erin O’Keefe’s set-up photographs, which exploit translucent panels and reflected light to create environments that play with visual perception. Shari Mendelson’s vessels recall classical glass vase forms from antiquity, but are created from that most ubiquitous of modern materials, recycled plastic bottles, which are painted with acrylic. In Doreen McCarthy’s lively sculpture of multi-sized, colored Plexiglas triangles, the passage of light through the surfaces and multi-hued shadows and reflections give the illusion of volumetric space continuing beyond the forms. Gary Petersen creates interacting zones of space using a translucent veil of white acrylic between playful and irregular geometric fore- and background areas. In Freddy Chandra’s painting/sculpture hybrids, acrylic and urethane paints on cast rectangular acrylic panels create rhythmic and luminous color sequences. Michelle Benoit’s small-scaled and softly-colored cast and layered Lucite panels evoke for the artist past events, memories, and a sense of place. Imparting a psychological weight to her idiosyncratic landscape, Laura Sharp Wilson renders heavy, over-scaled translucent chains draped and crisscrossed over her composition. In an intentional reversal of a colonial expedition, Vietnamese émigré Pipo Nguyen-duy recorded botanical samples gathered from Monet’s gardens at Giverny in intensely-hued cyanotypes, rendering the plant forms ghostly and immaterial through his process.