Kathryn Markel Fine Arts

06/29/2024

Saturdays are for gallery hopping 🙌

Ky Anderson on view at 20th Street & Josette Urso on view at 10th Ave. Open 11am-6pm.

06/27/2024

Talking with Ky Anderson about the technique used on her painting, “Sun and Water.”

See her beautiful work for yourself in “I Make Plans with the Landscape,” on view through 7/26.

06/25/2024

Our is: Josette Urso, "SuperBloom," 2024, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches

Josette Urso makes paintings, watercolors and drawings in an urgent attempt to capture the essence and energy of whatever surrounds her – be it a landscape, a subway, an apartment view, or a dinner table. Her approach involves moment-to-moment extrapolation governed by intuitive leaps of scale, color and wayward geometry. She works from observation - intuitively, playfully - in a process that makes room for many visual surprises and an enormous range of inventive mark making.

She says, “In painting, I'm responding to shape and form and the light and the experience of space. I'm looking off in every direction simultaneously, so the pieces are getting a bit more abstract, but they're still all based on looking. I find that my visual vocabulary is much broader if I respond to something as a jumping off point rather than relying on what's in my head.

I'm always trying to hunt for some kind of surprise. I don't want to ever know. I thrive on the ‘not knowing.’ It's like this journey, stumbling upon situations you didn't know existed until you discover them through your work. I never know how the painting's going to look until it happens; I just kind of figure it out along the way.”

See this work in "Wildcard," on view through July 26: tinyurl.com/464buv3n

06/22/2024

We had such a fun time at Thursday night’s receptions with friends old and new! Thank you to all who came by to celebrate 🎉

Josette Urso and Ky Anderson on view through 7/26

06/20/2024

Opening receptions TONIGHT from 6-8! 🥂Come celebrate these beautiful solo shows by Ky Anderson and Josette Urso ⬇️

📍529 W 20th Street: “I Make Plans with the Landscape” by Ky Anderson

📍179 10th Avenue: “Wildcard” by Josette Urso

06/18/2024

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to announce two new exhibitions:

📍179 10th Avenue: "Wildcard," new works by Josette Urso

📍529 W 20th Street: "I Make Plans With the Landscape," new paintings by Ky Anderson

Join us for the opening receptions this Thursday, 6/20, from 6-8pm in both galleries.

On view June 20 - July 26, 2024. Learn more: tinyurl.com/4n7jrvbv

06/15/2024

It’s the final day to see “Jitterbug Waltz” by Zuriel Waters! Stop by the gallery from 11-6 🐛

06/13/2024

Steven Baris thinks diagrammatically, and it’s no wonder that he paints in the same way. In his work, Baris attempts to visually define and articulate the amorphous and indescribable processes of everyday life.

See these diagrammatic paintings by Steven Baris through this Saturday, June 15. Baris will be in the gallery during the afternoon; stop by to meet him and learn more about his work.

Watch the walkthrough and browse works: tinyurl.com/2p82uu9a

06/11/2024

Our is: Joanne Freeman, "Orange Red," 2023, gouache on handmade paper, 20 x 18 inches

Joanne Freeman incorporates elements found in architecture, design, popular culture and art history in her work. Her reductive compositions and pure color mimic the low-tech graphics utilized in mid-century media, while also alluding to color field paintings of the 1960s. She uses tape to mask out shapes and create hardedge stencil-like forms, a process that acknowledges early screen printing techniques as well as cubism and collage.

When applying oil paint to linen and gouache to handmade paper, she accentuates the inherent properties of both mediums, the weave and tooth of the linen, the variants in the handmade paper and the pure saturated color of the paint. This direct tactile approach celebrates the details in the forms, the beauty of singular color and the power in simplicity.

Learn more: tinyurl.com/yp5c5umx

06/08/2024

Artist talk TODAY with exhibiting artist Zuriel Waters and Eric Hibit, artist and author of “Color Theory for Dummies.” We hope to see you at 3!

06/06/2024

A glimpse into our back room full of color after checking in stunning new paintings by Deborah Zlotsky🌈

View available works: tinyurl.com/57z76ztu

06/05/2024

📆 Save the date for an artist talk this Saturday, 6/8, at 3pm with exhibiting artist Zuriel Waters and Eric Hibit, artist and author of “Color Theory for Dummies.”

Photo from last week’s impromptu performance. In addition to his fabulous visual art, Waters is also a talented musician! 🎼🪈

📍179 10th Avenue, New York, NY

06/04/2024

Our is: Deborah Zlotsky, "Genealogy 4," 2023, acrylic and gouache on panel, 14 x 11 inches

Deborah Zlotsky's work has the ability to feel like it is evolving before your eyes. You know the piece itself is static, yet the forms - at once geometric and gestural - appear to compete for space within the plane, pushing and pulling from background to foreground. When she paints, drips, smears, and abrasions remain in the work, uncorrected and vital. Zlotsky relishes this quality of painting, animating the work by leaving evidence of its previous forms in drips and faded ghosts throughout the canvas. These imperfections trace the history of the making, and, as a metaphor, the accidents and complexities of living. As she ages and experiences the daily mismatch between her body and her consciousness, she is drawn to incongruities - creating paintings and drawings that seem old and new, flat and fleshy, geometric and figurative, bold and soft, constructed and alive.

Learn more: tinyurl.com/mr266j35

06/01/2024

Another beautiful Saturday in the galleries! Open until 6 - Steven Baris and Zuriel Waters on view.

📆 Save the date for an artist talk with Zuriel Waters on Saturday, 6/8 at 3pm.

05/31/2024

Katie DeGroot's commissioned work, "Promenade of Trees" was just installed at the Greenwich Library!

“Throughout Greenwich Library's long history, it has relied on the tree as an icon which reflects its commitment to growth and knowledge,” said Joe Williams, Greenwich Library Director. “I cannot think of a more perfect statement for our Reading Room which reflects our values as an institution.”

“Trees show us the immense individuality and diversity of nature,” says DeGroot. “How wonderful to be asked to create a painting, The Promenade of The Trees, for this Library, where knowledge and art can be shared thanks to the tree's great gift to us, paper.”

If you're in the area, stop by the library to meet Katie from 4:30-6:30: greenwichlibrary.libcal.com/event/12510722

Congratulations, Katie!

05/28/2024

Our is: Sarah Irvin, "I Assumed," 2019, ink on Yupo paper, 35 x 50 inches

Sarah Irvin begins her process by writing cursive text on a smooth surface with ink, followed by using a squeegee to destroy the marks she has created, causing the ink to spread across the surface into a new composition. The resulting marks are remnants of a written word, but the meaning has been confused and hidden. She explores a visual representation of thought while contemplating the limits of words as signifiers. Her work is based on explorations of autobiography, family history, genetic heritage, and memory. Her current work focuses on hidden text as a representation of memory, the abilities and limitations of the mind, and the simultaneous power and shortcomings of language.

Learn more: tinyurl.com/524p2x8u

05/25/2024

We’re open on this gorgeous holiday weekend!☀️

Stop by today from 11am-6pm to see “Jitterbug Waltz” by Zuriel Waters and “Stations of Attention” by Steven Baris.

05/23/2024

We had fun this afternoon showing off works by Zuriel Waters to this lovely group from Ecuador. Thanks for stopping by!

05/21/2024

Our is: Zuriel Waters, "AM Metro," 2023, acrylic on jute and cotton duck, upholstery thread, hardware, 39 x 27 inches

Zuriel Waters constructs his works entirely from sewn fabric and acrylic paint. There is no wooden armature and they are very flat. Small dress pins hold the work to the wall via eye hooks which are sewn into the topstitch on the reverse side. Each piece is created one-after-the-other, never simultaneously, in an iterative process which retains traces of time of year as well as Waters' temporal psychological condition. Because they are so rooted in seasonality they can be thought of as a form of fashion design, trawling his neighborhood for color information from daily walks. In this way, the work also participates in a constructivist reduction of the urban environment, a kind of futurist landscape painting.

In Waters' own words, "...the work has been referred to as ‘bugs’, borrowing from Starship Troopers vernacular for aliens (but also in the sense that anything can be a bug, a bu**er, a cute term of endearment) or as butterflies suspended in a state of perpetual metamorphoses. But this is just a convenience, a way of hinting at their figurativeness, their “being-ness” because they are in fact aliens from the 2nd dimension, an invasive species of ‘flatlanders’ who occupy wall space and transform it into something more dynamic and spectral. It is my ambition to create an art which adds value to people’s lives, like a kind of Roomba-esque automaton, a “machine-for-living” designed to help rid a house of the despair caused by pallid, static walls."

The title of his solo show, “Jitterbug Waltz” pays tribute to this interpretation while incorporating the artist’s love of music (himself also a lifelong player of woodwind instruments). Written by pianist Fats Waller in 1942, the song features a descending line composed of two-note melodic phrases that tumble one after the other like a slow-motion somersault down the stairs, incessantly pointing back up even as the next continues to fall. This kind of comic resilience forms the emotional context of the show “… like a buoy on the ocean that just doesn’t seem to know how to not keep bobbing back up, the waves keep coming in one after the other but some universal force just keeps pulling it back to the surface."

See Waters' new body of work in his solo show, "Jitterbug Waltz," on view in the 10th Avenue gallery through June 15: tinyurl.com/5ary43x2

05/17/2024

For Steven Baris, working with color is an intuitive process akin to the improvisational nature of jazz music 🎼 🎨

Listen to Baris dive into his process and visit the gallery to see his new paintings in person. Open 10-6 today and 11-6 tomorrow.

05/14/2024

Our is: Steven Baris, Stations of Attention E12," 2024, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches

Steven Baris considers his abstract paintings to be diagrams that he creates in a persistent attempt to visually define and articulate the amorphous, and ineffable processes of everyday life. As he says, “Essentially, diagrams are graphic displays that map otherwise invisible temporal processes and space-time relationships. This is precisely what I aim to achieve in my paintings.”

In this recent series, “Stations of Attention,” Baris is concerned with the practice at the heart of his Buddhist belief – the importance of paying attention. As hard as we might try, attention wanders and often gets lost in the millions of daily impressions life imposes. Baris uses the precise, concrete elements that make up his unique visual language - opaque circles floating in a vibrating field of lines - to create a diagrammatic visualization of attention as a highly fragmented and nonlinear operation. The paintings reflect the fact that although we believe the act of paying attention is one we can control, we are fooling ourselves.

See works by Baris in his solo show, "Stations of Attention," on view in the 20th Street gallery through June 15: tinyurl.com/ysfty5uy

05/13/2024

The galleries were bustling last week as we opened two dazzling solo shows for Zuriel Waters and Steven Baris. Thank you to all who came out to celebrate! 🎉

“Jitterbug Waltz” and “Stations of Attention” are on view through 6/15.

05/11/2024

We have your Saturday plans covered 🙌

Join us this afternoon from 3-6 to celebrate the opening of Steven Baris’ solo show, “Stations of Attention.”

05/09/2024

It’s opening day! Join us tonight from 6-8 in the 10th Avenue gallery to celebrate “Jitterbug Waltz” by Zuriel Waters, and Saturday from 3-6 in the 20th Street gallery to celebrate “Stations of Attention” by Steven Baris 🥂

View the exhibition catalogues: issuu.com/markelfinearts

05/07/2024

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to announce two new exhibitions:

📍179 10th Avenue: "Jitterbug Waltz," a collection of shaped and sewn paintings by Zuriel Waters. Reception Thursday, May 9, 6-8pm.

📍529 W 20th Street: "Stations of Attention," featuring new paintings by Steven Baris. Reception Saturday, May 11, 3-6pm.

On view May 9 through June 15, 2024. Learn more: tinyurl.com/4n7jrvbv

05/07/2024

Artist talk tonight with KMFA artist Steven Baris!

05/03/2024

Take a virtual tour of Nancy Cohen’s “The State We’re in.” There’s only two days left to see these beautiful works in person - don’t miss your chance!

Nancy Cohen's unconventional drawings, made with paper pulp and fritted glass, originate in her move to Jersey City in the 1980s. Along the shore and waterways, the evergreen vegetation thriving amid industrial waste sparked Cohen's environmental awareness. Waterways recur in her work as symbols of....

05/02/2024

“When in a natural setting such as a forest, we are sensitized to our surroundings in a manner that we don't experience in any urban setting. The silence of a tree, blade of grass, or a moss-covered stone fills our periphery with a sense of familiarity and comfort” — Peter Hoffer

Don’t miss seeing these beautiful paintings in person. “Impressions de la Région Toulousaine” closes Saturday, 5/4.

Peter Hoffer's fourth solo exhibition, "Impressions de la Région Toulousaine," features landscape paintings that are more relational than representational – he explores trees as protagonists. “When in a natural setting such as a forest, we are sensitized to our surroundings in a manner that we ...

05/02/2024

Future Fair is off to a great start! Here’s a peek into our booth with works by Peter Stephens & Arielle Zamora. We hope to see you here - visit futurefairs.com to get your tickets! 🎟️

04/30/2024

Our is: Arielle Zamora, "80 Times," 2023, oil, acrylic, joint compound, cold wax on panel, 20 x 16 inches

Arielle Zamora's painting practice features layers of paint and joint compound as an exploration of line and form. These mathematically-informed, hand-carved patterns contrast with softer elements like subtle color and chance imperfections in their ground to create unexpectedly tender ruminations on shape. Zamora is intensely drawn to relationships between line and form, and draws inspiration from architecture and its surroundings to help assign structure, repetition, and function to the two dimensional plane. Recently, Zamora has been paying more attention to how repetition and symmetry affect our feelings of belonging and safety within a world full of noise, loss, and uncertainty.

See works by Arielle Zamora alongside Peter Stephens at Future Fair this week, May 1 - 4. Learn more: tinyurl.com/4xunh6f9