NEW YORK, NY.- The Tibor de Nagy Gallery presents a selection of recent paintings by David Kapp. The artist has explored imagery of New York City for the last two decades. The exhibition includes large and small oil paintings of sidewalks and crowded streets, as well as highway traffic at night, in which the bright headlights of cars contrast against dark blues.
Kapp invites the viewer to the tops of buildings, to sit in taxi cab-spattered traffic, and to experience the frenzy of the city. His expressionistic take on the urban landscape captures the vitality of each chosen locale. The striking use of color with light and shadow both highlights and obscures the geometry of megalithic skyscrapers, building facades, and sidewalks as pedestrians rush by. Whether gazing down on a solitary figure on a park bench or on a crowd stretching as far as the eye can see, we experience the heartbeat of the city.
The artist’s work has been the subject of over twenty-five solo exhibitions throughout the country. Kapp has received two Academy Awards from The American Academy of Arts and Letters along with a Rosenthal Foundation award. His work is in many public and private collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Academy of Design, and The Mint Museum of Art.
The gallery also presents an installation of 157 abstract works on paper arranged on a gallery wall by Tom Burckhardt. The exhibition also includes a selection of vintage book covers on which the artist has drawn and painted abstract illustrations.
Continuing his exploration of the artistic process, 157 Elements of a Painting deconstructs the canonical notion of a painting as each element teeters between figuration and abstraction. According to Burckhardt, these oil works on old book pages “assemble autonomously, awaiting instructions to cohere into an image, or they fracture and dissipate.” The viewer is tasked with assembling the bold, stenciled-like images into his or her own whole “painting.” The fragmentary motifs, forms, and colors create a playful index of painterly elements. While some forms may seem to be recognizable, they are not assuredly identifiable.
Burckhardt has had over fifteen solo expositions, his most recent at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 2006. The artist is the recipient of the International Association of Art Critics Award, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and two Pollack-Krasner Foundation grants.
