Hudson Valley Artists 2011: Exercises in Unnecessary Beauty
June 25 – November 13, 2011
Alice and Horace Chandler Gallery and North Gallery
Jane Bloodgood-Abrams • Hannah Raine Brenner-Leonard • Karen Capobianco • Amy Cheng • Vincent Connelly • Timothy Englert • Charles Geiger • Roman Hrab • Dave Hebb • Jim Holl • Sue Horowitz • Charise Isis • Lynn Itzkowitz • Michael Joyce • Iain Machell • Tanya Marcuse • Gilbert Plantinga • Susan Sammis • Bill Schuck • Scott Serrano • Charles Stein • Paul G. Stewart • Joy Taylor • Harry Wilks
Click HERE for a link to an article and images of Scott Serrano's installation.
Amy Cheng, Lust/Caution, 2009, oil on canvas, 28 x 36 inches; courtesy the artist
Hudson Valley Artists 2011: Exercises in Unnecessary Beauty will feature selected works by artists living and working in the mid Hudson Valley who dare to address that most elusive of qualities: the beautiful.
The exhibition includes work that employs beautiful images and craftsmanship as well as work that questions the idea and/or ideal of beauty. A diverse range of video installation, photography, painting, sculpture, and multi-media work addresses these issues through depictions of and references to nature, to the process of artmaking, to the social and political setting in which art is made and encountered, and to the work of other artists. In the call to artists for this exhibition, curator Brian Wallace noted that "Beauty is a theoretical construct, a know-it-when-you-see-it essence, a goal and a goad, an absolute, a relative and ineffable characteristic, an historical battle zone. For some, it sits, seldom used and heavy, yet still lending weight to the whole enterprise; for others, it’s like a pair of Vise-Grips—often used, but never acknowledged. For still others, beauty is an indistinguishable unit—both means and finished product." The exhibition celebrates the myriad ways artists working in this area now are connected to the world of ideas and images.
Hannah Raine Brenner-Leonard, valley, 2010, sumi ink on paper, 20 x 32 inches; courtesy the artist
This is the third year that a Hudson Valley Artists Annual Purchase Award of $3,000 will be used to acquire one or more artworks from the exhibition for the Dorsky Museum’s permanent collection. This Purchase Award is made possible through the Alice and Horace Chandler Art Acquisition Fund. Artists whose work was purchased in 2010 are the Peekskill collaborative/public artist team Belshe/Prown and New Paltz photographer/book artist François Deschamps.
Charles Geiger, Out of Sight, 2010, gouache, acrylic, and ink on paper, 48 x 59 inches; courtesy the artist
The Hudson Valley Artists exhibition series is open to emerging and mid-career artists from Columbia, Dutchess, Greene, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster and Westchester Counties who have not yet had a major one-person museum exhibition and who do not have an exclusive contract with a commercial gallery. There is no application fee.
Support for this exhibition has been provided by M&T Bank.
