NEW CANAAN, CT .- Heather Gaudio Fine Art announces it has moved to a new location at 66 Elm Street in downtown New Canaan, CT. “We have been very fortunate in securing a prime location in New Canaan and we are thrilled to be a part of the fine art dialogue that has been flourishing in town and in the area in the past few years,” states Gaudio. The town has become a destination for art enthusiasts with the Glass House, the Silvermine Arts Guild, other historically landmarked locations and the soon to be inaugurated Grace Farms. Since opening her gallery four years ago, Gaudio has introduced local audiences to emerging and established artists from all over the country, Europe and Asia. Collectors have travelled quite the distance to see the shows in the gallery.
Specializing in emerging and established artists, the gallery offers contemporary works on paper, photography, painting and sculpture in various price points. Additionally, the gallery provides a full range of art advisory services, from forming and maintaining private or corporate collections, to securing secondary market material, to assisting with framing and installation. The focus is on each individual client, selecting art that best serves his or her vision, space, and resources.
For its inaugural exhibition, “New Arrangements: Contemporary Reimagined,” the gallery will feature the work of five women artists: Jaq Belcher, Cassandria Blackmore, Ann Gardner, Madeleine Keesing and Jae Ko. The show illustrates intriguing relationships between form and materiality as they come together in reimagined processes. The exhibition opens on October 3rd and will run through December 30th.
The artists in the show have appropriated the use of industrial materials in unexpected ways, reconfiguring them into a contemporary fine art context. Juxtaposed with more conventional art practices, the objects engage the viewer in compelling and contrasting dialogues. The works share unusual processes in execution, requiring great physicality and non-traditional methods.
Two artists exhibited have taken to use paper in highly original yet divergent ways. Jaq Belcher methodically cuts and slices to create precise voids and raised surfaces, like essential syncopated notes forming part of a whole rhythm. They come together in a complex set of patterns and shadows that are delicate and graceful.
Jae Ko’s discourse with paper is equally inventive, submerging reams of the material into dyes with graphite powder. She manipulates them into coils and twirls, forming elegant spirals and ribbon-like sculptures.
Entirely different approaches to processing glass, concrete and steel are present in the works of two other artists. Cassandria Blackmore reverse-paints on sheets of glass where she signs her name backwards. In a seemingly contradictory move, she shatters the glass only to re-assemble the fragments like a puzzle. The resulting panes are abstract color field works evoking landscape or otherworldly imagery.
Conversely, Ann Gardner builds from an ancient art practice, creating stunning three-dimensional objects that can take on monumental proportions. Gardner assembles pigment-tinted concrete and cut glass mosaics into welded supports, fabricating luminous abstract shapes. Her sculptures can vary from large monochromatic Minimalist forms to intricately complex kaleidoscopic assemblages.
The works of these artists simultaneously contrast and complement Madeleine Keesing’s formalist canvases. Equally intricate, Keesing’s work draws from the patterns and decoration movement and color field paintings. Her new series is a departure from her earlier three-dimensional monochromatic surfaces, using a new geometric iconography that is still reminiscent of textile work.
