NEW YORK, NY.- Nancy Margolis Gallery announces “Summer Exhibit 2015” opening July 9 and is on view through August 14, 2015. The group exhibition includes works by four abstract painters all new to the gallery: Cristina Camacho, Marc Cheetham, Sean McDonough, & Aliza Morell. The Viewing Room hosts a special exhibition by recent MFA Rhode Island School of Design graduate, Tommy Mishima.
CRISTINA CAMACHO “Moms Doodles” is a series of lithographs inspired by Camacho’s mother’s obsessive sketchbooks. The series is an ongoing project, where each print is unique and borrows fragments of Camacho’s mother’s drawings she hid for 27 years of symmetrical, colorful, precise, and obsessive patterns, similar to Camacho’s canvas paintings. Layers of the patterns are juxtaposed, creating complex histories and connections between her mother’s doodles and her own practice. Cristina Camacho originally from Bogota, Colombia now lives and works in New York, NY. In 2015 Camacho received her MFA from Columbia University, NY. In 2010 she received her BFA in Communication and Product Design from Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Columbia. She has also studied at renowned institutions including The School of Visual Arts (SVA) New York, the Art Student League New York, and New York University. In 2011/12 Camacho participated in two residencies at SVA. Camacho has exhibited her paintings largely in New York and Bogota. She was a recipient of numerous scholarships and fellowships at Columbia University for film, teaching, and visual arts.
MARC CHEETHAM makes small painted abstractions that deal with the relationships formed among geometric shapes, color, and the materials that make up their overall support. The paintings, often no larger than one foot, are built with irregular shapes cut out of burlap, painted and layered creating intriguing minimalist compositions. The woven texture and jagged edges of the material cause shapes to be misaligned & overlap. This is fascinating up close as each piece has a handmade quality celebrating raw, delicate material. The color combinations are simplistic, yet varying degrees of transparent and opaque color give a freshness to the funky shaped paintings. Marc Cheetham lives and works in New Jersey. He studied at the Art Students League New York, 2004-2006, and has exhibited his paintings at numerous galleries in New York including Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, Storefront Ten Eyck, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, Proto Gallery, Hoboken, NJ, Bernarducci Meisel Gallery, and Kouros Gallery, New York.
SEAN MCDONOUGH “Extrovert” paintings are acrylic painted on the back of canvas stretched over wood with tacks. McDounough applies paint to strips of wood or canvas bars and presses them against the back of the canvas leaving a stamp of paint on the reverse side as it seeps through onto the front of the canvas. He repeats this over and over with varying colors on different sized pieces of wood. There is no composition planning. As more strips of painted wood are applied a maze like geometric pattern is created. Shifts in color also create shapes within the unit of linear wood stamps. Sometimes it fills the canvas to its edges while other times it leaves space within the form or around its outer edges creating negative shapes where the bare canvas is left. The process of hammering the tacks into the wood, painting each of the surfaces, and deconstructing all of it, creates an experience that is physical, detached, yet engaged. McDonough was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY where he currently lives and works. In 2007 McDonough received his BS at New York University and in 2012 his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
ALIZA MORELL There is physicality to Morell’s quiet sensational abstractions. Subtly shifting colors are rendered with broad, visible marks. Whiplash gestures drip and drag through wet layers of paint beneath. Despite a palpable economy of moves, it hard to tell how or in what order the paintings are made. As she describes: “Painting is a way to embody ambiguity. I draw from my surroundings, distilling the parts that mesmerize me. My neighborhood in Brooklyn is an influence-- the electric signs; the infinite “patinas” on worn surfaces. But I’m looking for more elusive inputs too. Fluorescent light on fog; the glisten of wet pavement; shadows crossing shadows. These things affect me in a very visceral way. They become clues to how I can handle the paint.” Morell received her BFA in Visual Arts in 2005 from the School of the Art Institute Chicago and her MFA in 2014 from The Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University NJ. Morell has shown her work in numerous galleries in the Chicago and New York areas including two solo exhibitions, Comfort Station, and ACRE Projects, both in Chicago. In 2012 she was an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and a Grant Recipient from the CAAP (Community Arts Assistance Program), City of Chicago, Dept. of Cultural Affairs. Morell was also an Artist in Residence at ACRE, Steuben, WI, Harold Arts Chesterhill, OH, Visiting Artist, at Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, MI, and The Cliff Dwellers Club, Chicago, IL . Her work has been published in New American Paintings, Peek blog, New City, ARTslant, and Design for Mankind Blog.
IN THE VIEWING ROOM:
TOMMY MISHIMA is interested in the schism between information and reality; specifically on how the proliferation and omnipresence of information has drastically affected our ability to discriminate truth from fiction. His latest series of paintings addresses how this incessant layering of data has removed us from partaking on any practical usage of information and we have in fact become passive consumerists of facts, news, lies, misrepresentations, etc, fed to us by media outlets on a daily basis. Mishima received his MFA in Painting in 2014 from Rhode Island School of Design, and his BFA from Parsons School of Design. In 2014, he was an artist in resident at the Vermont Studio Center and the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship. He lives and works in New York City.
