COMMUNITY GALLERY
Distance and Happiness, Dreams and Time – Group Exhibition
curated by Jeff Evans
March 12 – April 13
Opening Reception: March 16, 7-9pm
Artist Talk: April 13, 2-3pm
Mermaid – Elena Chestnykh oil on canvas 58×46, 2018
Bather Triptych – Jeff Evans acrylic and oil on canvas 24×48, 2017
Couple – Gary Giordano mixed media on canvas, 72×51, 2017
BBBBB – Buket Savci oil on canvas 48×48, 2017
This exhibition presents four artists working in two-dimensional pictorial art, and specifically figurative art that considers images of women. The artists are at once local, national, and international citizens, some with direct ties to the Delaware Valley and the greater Trenton area. Trenton is a burgeoning art scene to which the show would be presenting these artists and their works. This exhibition engages visitors in a dialogue regarding evocative images, influence, and disparate styles of figurative painting.
This exhibition intends to engage local artists and visitors in a dialogue of how one subject, women, can evoke and span multiple feelings and emotions. The use of the female form throughout art history, in all cultures, has carried with it a myriad of emotions and been used to represent countless stories in fact and fiction. This exhibition also explores that most direct use of images of women; to gather and attract viewers, and represent that which the artist most wants his or her audience to see.
The differences in style and methods of each artist generating these paintings carries with it the exhibition theme of distance and time. Some of the works call out the sense of time as both history and activity. Other works bring forth feelings of happiness, whether it be real domestic scenes with partners or idealized, dreamlike imagery.
Elena Chestnykh’s paintings are showing us a distance between different times in her life. Some works deal with this distance as longing for past experiences. Other works display change, sometimes uncomfortably, with subjects crashing into one another, or pushing away from each other.
“Most of my works are about women’s body and experience of embodiment, whether erotic, abusive or metaphorical. I show the body as a site of waste, abuse, and trauma as well as a source of vitality, desire, and pleasure.”
Jeff Evans’ works are a response to that disconnected interaction with the female form which is the used in media, photography, and advertising. The works are a direct response and in many ways a re-telling of a story or idea that might seem inescapable.
Gary Giordano generates imagery from previous experiences, dreams, and emotional responses to happenings in his life. While the women pictured are truly in his life, the way he is showing them to us comes from the immediacy of a recent dream or response to visceral feelings.
Buket Savci’s works involve the quiet, intimate or happy moments in our lives, and the resulting feelings of contentment. These works on display, as maybe a Fragonard painting might, drive the viewer into the lives if not the arms of women. Her work gives us specific details and objects described so closely, they become known to us.
“My recent work is about the fleeting moments of pure joy and happiness. I create paintings addressing the ephemerality of happiness while using casual objects like balloons as a metaphor for our short-lived contentment.”
Along with the paintings, a small piece of ephemera will be on display as well (on the wall). This object will be that which influences the artist in some way. As an example, Jeff Evans will be displaying a small quilted piece of fabric created by his mother; Buket Savci will be display a small deflated graphic cartoon balloon, which is an object that evokes themes in her works.
Both Gary Giordano and Jeff Evans are local to Trenton, and Buket Savci is a veteran of working as a content painter for a prominent artist in the Trenton area who remains at the very top of the art world. Elena Chestnykh, an integral artist to this exhibition, works in Brooklyn, NY.