Encounter curated by Augusto Arbizo

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Encounter
Charles Burchfield, Louisa Chase, Anna Jung Seo, Claude Lawrence, Ryan Mrozowski, Soumya Netrabile, Alice Neel, Laurie Nye, Norma Tanega

Curated by Augusto Arbizo

November 11, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday, November 11, 6-8pm

Rachel Uffner Gallery is pleased to present Encounter, a group show by a multi-generational group of artists who use diverse approaches to nature and landscape in painting. The exhibition is curated by Augusto Arbizo.
 
Artists encounter and experience the natural world as the site of contemplation and storytelling. They contend with landscape as a space rich with meaning and possibilities, from corporeal events to spiritual occurrences. Topography, light, nature, climate, the vicissitudes of time—and the consequence of human presence (or absence)—have inspired and challenged each of the painters featured in this exhibition. Recurring elements, motifs, and ideas can be found throughout—sun and moon, the horizon as periphery, location as memory—establishing observational and referential contextual signifiers for the viewer to use as a lens through which we can explore and navigate each place.

Charles Burchfield’s (1893–1967) large scale Lower Part of Sunburst (1960-63) and Alice Neel’s (1900–1984) rare landscape The Sea (1947) anchor the exhibition with depictions of the sun and moon. Soumya Netrabile’s (b. 1966) lush canvases picture terrains profuse with movement and transformation, such as in The Descent (2022), while visionary compositions by Louisa Chase (1951–2016) and Anna Jung Seo (b. 1964) hint at symbolist elements in nature. Known for their careers and backgrounds in music, Norma Tanega (1939–2019) and Claude Lawrence (b. 1944) improvise on visceral interpretations of shifting exterior worlds. Flora and fauna are distilled towards abstraction in optically charged works by Ryan Mrozowski (b. 1981), and in Laurie Nye’s (b. 1972) chromatically intoxicating Dianthus Dream (2022). From still and meditative, to more actively traversed, each landscape setting is presented as a site rich with narrative–open, sometimes playful, often sacred, and always manyfold.

Augusto Arbizo was founding director of 11R / Eleven Rivington and partner at Van Doren Waxter and is currently an advisor at Schwartzman&. He previously organized Touch at Rachel Uffner Gallery’s upstairs space in 2021. Very special thanks to the artists and gallerists who have collaborated on this project, including: Cheim & Read, NY; DC Moore Gallery, NY; Hirschl & Adler, NY; Philip Martin Gallery, LA; Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago; White Columns, NY.