VIRIDIAN ARTISTS ACONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Please List
left to right fragments of art: Kim/ Riley/ N'Cognita/ Cullen/ Craig/ Zurlo
New Viridian Artists and Affiliates Exhibition
March 22- April 2, 2011
Reception: Saturday, March 26, 2011 4-7pm
Nancy Treherne Craig * John Cullen * Young Sam Kim* Vernita N'Cognita
Sarah Riley * Don Zurlo
Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present new work by new Viridian Artists & Affiliates. The exhibition features a wide variety of art by these exciting artists recently represented by Viridian Artists. The exhibit opens Tuesday, March 22nd and extends through Saturday, April 2nd with a reception Saturday, Saturday, March 26, 4-7 PM.
Each artist in this exhibit has been given approximately 10 linear feet of wall space to present a mini solo of their recent art. Three of these artists, Nancy Treherne Craig, Young Sam Kim and John Cullen, deal with landscape or cityscape, but all do so with very different and unique approaches.
John Cullen and Young Sam Kim are both exhibiting at Viridian for the first time. John Cullen is a painter of abstracted landscapes, and in fact calls himself an "abstract impressionist". His landscapes focus on water reflections. When looking at his paintings on panels, one sees clearly the swirling currents and the splashes of color and texture that allude to watery realms, unidentifiable in reality but more clearly understood inwardly. Cullen who received a Masters degree in Art Education from Pratt in 1970, has since taught on a college level and worked as a professional artist.
Young Sam Kim is a digital photographer who received his B.F.A. in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in 2002. Of Korean heritage, he has been afflicted since youth with a hearing impairment and came to the US to study and explore his creative impulses here. His art of arresting pictograms are created of urban buildings and scenes overlaid with fragments of photographs of people, sky, trees and planes, reminding him of dreams and memories of his youth. These, he has digitally collaged and layered into city scapes that speak of humans trapped in urban landscapes and forests of buildings yearning to fly away and to be free.
Nancy Treherne Craig who first had a solo exhibition at Viridian in 2008, aspires to paint more than pretty pictures. Her fascination with the natural world is focused on metaphysical movement and our life journeys. Composition is her most crucial tool when she paints, as she attempts to minimize gesture & aim for an appearance of anonymity. The work is intended as a reminder of the paths available to us if we will wake up and be aware. The artist studied with Elaine de Kooning at the Pennsylvania State University and received an Award of Excellence from the Kenan Art Center of Niagra Falls in 2004.
Don Zurlo, after study at Rutgers with Allan Kaprov and exploring a wide array of media & techniques, has returned to a minimalist approach in his painting in which ambiguity is presented through simple acrylic images resembling the torn paper compositions of his student years at Rutgers. Still as philosophical as he was then, his paintings echo his view of reality, for he states, “In many ways form is an illusion - our interpretation of an infinite variety of relationships between fields of energy".
Sarah Riley is the Chair of the art department at Southeastern Missouri StateUniversity and is finishing a book about various approaches to printmaking that combines a range of media. Her artwork too is an exploration and mixture of media and techniques combining drawing, collage, printmaking and paint. Many of her works contain feminist overtones, some alluding to autobiography while others, just moments in the life of an artist.
Vernita N'Cognita is a mixed media and performance artist who has been working and exhibiting in New York and throughout the world for more than twenty years. She came from Ohio to NYC in the early days of feminism, was part of that movement and has continued to explore through her art practice, the trials and concerns of contemporary women. She is also deeply involved with curating and creating as well with environmental activism, exhibits of art from recycled materials (Art from Detritus) and continuing to create since 2006, the "Endless Junkmail Scroll".
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