Scope Hamptons 2007 - Part 2

Having spent much of the weekend at Scope Hamptons , I returned on the final Sunday with a plan in mind of what artists I wanted to cover for my weekly blog. In addition to the blog I often have articles published in the Southampton Artists Newsletter, so I knew I would also mention the local galleries with booths.

Let's begin with a local museum, which had a booth of sorts outdoors, where all weekend they created an art project with the children in attendance. Scope seems to always have interesting programs for children, and this year the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum hosted a whale hunt event on Sunday afternoon, having spent the time prior to it constructing a large sculpture of a whale with the various children. [See photo.] The boltax.gallery , from Shelter Island featured small paintings by Don Florence, which reminded me to also mention the annual small works competition that the gallery holds. At Sara Nightingale (Water Mill) I was intrigued by various “cut out” works, by different artists, but especially ai intricate skull by Hunter Stabler. The McNeill At Group represents local artists including Jeff Muhs, who paints landscapes, but this time also included a clear plastic sculpture of a lobster with moveable parts.

Matauqus Tarrant Assistant Curator Shinnecock Nation Museum and Cultural Center with the Whale

The Edsel Williams' The Fireplace Project (East Hampton) had a good selection of works, and I always appreciate those by artist Wayne White who uses Candyland type of imagery but then interweaves words into the scenes. Those words give the works quite an edge.

Spanierman has two galleries in Manhattan: Spanierman Modern , where contemporary artists are represented, and the original one where they have works by masters. Spanierman Gallery in East Hampton , mixes the two by showing many well known local artists, maters and artists who deserve more recognition.

On the first night, I was walking past Spanierman, trying to find the small signs at the top of booth edges that Scope posts to identify each gallery.When I saw the Clifford Smith painting, I knew right where I was. Smith's work with patterned light, on waves of light as shown in the image included here, echoes my own focus of the stroke, which is another form of wave. Of course, as I looked beneath the painting I would have noticed Gavin Spanierman's wonderful purple blazer slung over a chair.

Clifford Smith Blue Ocean IV, 2006 Oil on linen, 60 x 90 inches

As I have written in other blogs and also in the Manifesto for UnGraven Image Art , a stroke is a kind of unit. At Agro'/Glickman Step (1) the work of artist Susan Weinthaler is all about small units. In works that feature paper dots as strokes or with blocks of color she creates wonderful spatial patterns.

At Massimo Carasi - The Flat, I found another artist, Cristiano De Gaetano, who creates portraits using colored dabs of plasticine, the way other artists might use thick dabs of paint. It is a bit like Pointellism with clay as the strokes.

Andy Moon Wilson draws business cards with tiny strokes, mainly pen and ink works, which the curator's office displays row upon row of in books or on walls, thus creating more pattern of a fantastic patterned doodle vision.

Galerie Haus Schneider Uschi Kolb featured works by Dani Tull of cave men standing in front tie-dyed skys. Maybe I have spent too much time painting using the words of Genesis 1-2 :7 for my strokes recently, but effect of the imagery grabs one.

I knew I wanted to see the work of Yigal Ozeri at Mike Weiss Gallery. Ozeri is a photo-realist whose strokes are ephemeral, to the degree that some of his paintings have to be carefully squinted at to determine that they are indeed paintings, not photographs.

Yigal Ozeri Untitled; Priscilla in ecstasy, 2007

Scope Hamptons is a wonderful way to combine summer, art and the sea, three of my favorite things-- a wonderful way to weekend in the Hamptons.

August 6, 2008

Also see Scope Hamptons 2007 Part 1