FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Santa Fe, NM – Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art presents two solo exhibitions running concurrently, June 7 – July 7, 2013. Gayle Crites’ Bark and John Geldersma’s Variations. Opening receptions are Friday, June 7, 5-7pm.

Gayle Crites: Bark

Gayle Crites’ artistic process involves travel, not only to collect inspiration, experiences and knowledge, but to collect tapa. For her most recent body of work, titled Bark, the bark paper she’s using includes siapo from American Somoan, tuno from Nicaragua, and tapa from Tonga. These papers form the literal foundation of her mixed media painting.  Their textures, patterns, imperfections, and perfections direct the artist in her image making process.

Pounded from tree bark into a soft pliable cloth-like paper, the natural, off-white tapa receives the fine ink lines and flowing colors from Crites’ hand. Her imagery builds to form abstract narratives that ebb and flow with color and line. Many times her titles form the “key” to unlock the narrative and interpret the imagery.  Yet even without the “key,” her work is grounded in the natural elements of water, air and dirt, the foundation of our environment.

Gayle Crites is based in the Denver area and has shown widely in Colorado, New Mexico, and California. Her most recent museum acquisition includes two works from her Passport series at the Allentown Art Museum, Allentown PA. Her international exposure has increased lately with inclusion in the traveling show, International Art Exhibition, originating out of Los Angeles, most recently on view in Ensenada, Mexico. Bark is Crites’ second solo exhibition at Chiaroscuro.

John Geldersma: Variations

For John Geldersma, after 25 years of exhibiting in Santa Fe, the Spirit Pole has become his signature form. From the first sculptures made of driftwood pulled out of the Mississippi River, to the gentle figurative curves of the aspen poles he now employs, Geldersmas’ Spirit Poles have grown and changed with the artist and come to define his aesthetic.

Variations presents approximately 20 new Spirit Poles, all individual works, yet connected to the whole. The installation resembles a “forest” of colorfully painted and carved sculpture and the work evokes a tribal feel that speaks to the connection between earth and sky. Carved with dynamic cuts and smooth edges, then marked with primary colors within a burned black ground, the surface design pushes and pulls your eye around the form.

John Geldersma has an extensive national exhibition record in both public and private spaces, with the most recent public exhibition at the Acadian Center for the Arts, Lafayette LA. This is Geldersma’s third solo exhibition at Chiaroscuro.

June 7 – July 7, 2013

Opening Receptions: Friday, June 7, 5-7pm

High resolution photographs available upon request; call Heather Doyle at 505-992-0711 or email gallery@chiaroscurosantafe.com

Location: Chiaroscuro, 702 ½ & 708 Canyon Road on

Gypsy Alley, Santa Fe, NM 87501, 505-992-0711

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Santa Fe, NM - Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art presents its first two solo exhibitions of the year, running concurrently, May 3 – June 1, 2013. Daniel Brice’s Works on Paper and Bebe Krimmer’s Spatial Order. Opening receptions are Friday, May 3, 5-7pm.

Daniel Brice: Works on Paper

In two sizes, on paper, Brice explores thick layers of paint, meticulously applied and burnished to a fine sheen. This color field work, more complex than it initially appears, records the tension and release of color and form in a modest rectangular playing field. But what puts this work “over the top” is the indescribable quality of paint on paper -it’s different from canvas, softer and more intimate, and the colors sing.

This small show features just over a dozen recent works on paper from this Los Angeles based artist. Nationally recognized and exhibited, this is Brice’s third solo show at Chiaroscuro.

Bebe Krimmer: Spatial Order

Spatial Order is a culmination of sorts, distilling ideas and techniques Krimmer has been developing for years. Put simply, it all comes together here: repetition, collage, color, paint-handling, scale and content. Krimmer has spent the better part of 2 years working towards this exhibition, which will include a dozen medium to large scale paintings, and wall installations of numerous small scale works. The paintings all contain an element of discovery. As you approach the work, the surface transforms from a riot of abstract marks into a formal structure forming a hypnotic rhythm of collage elements. The white-on-white and black-on-black pieces appear minimal from a great distance, then open up as you step closer.

Santa Fe-based Krimmer enjoys a long and productive painting career, first in Chicago and then Santa Fe since the early 90′s. Krimmer has shown extensively in New Mexico, Illinois and California. Recent awards include a Merit of Excellence for the Miniature Exhibition, Roswell Museum, Roswell, NM, and a scholarship at Santa Fe Art Institute. This is Krimmer’s second solo show with Chiaroscuro.

May 3-June 1, 2013

Opening Receptions: Friday, May 3, 5-7pm

Location: 702 ½ & 708 Canyon Road on Gypsy Alley, Santa Fe, NM 87501, 505-992-0711

High resolution photographs available upon request; call Heather Doyle at 505-992-0711 or email gallery@chiaroscurosantafe.com

“Art & Antiques” Magazine, March 2013

One of the newest schools of contemporary art is also the oldest. The swirling, dotted canvases and boards of Australian Aboriginal artists draw on over 60,000 years of history, myth and relationship to their land, but no Aboriginal people made artworks like these until the early 1970s. Today, artists from deep in the desert travel to New York and other major cities to show and sell their work. The art itself, once bought only locally and for little money, is now sought after by collectors outside Australia and selling for prices up to seven figures. And on the curatorial and critical side of things, museum shows are educating the public about the unique qualities of this ancient-yet-modern art.

Like a few other indigenous art movements in modern times—for example, Canadian Inuit art—contemporary Aboriginal art began at the instigation of white people. In 1971, Geoffrey Bardon, an Australian art teacher who was working in the Western Desert, went to the remote settlement of Papunya, in the vicinity of Alice Springs, and gave the residents acrylic paint, brushes and Masonite boards. While Bardon had intended the art supplies for the use of children, older men at the settlement started using them and made paintings that translated imagery from traditional “ground paintings” (temporary compositions made on the earth with seeds, flowers, minerals and other natural found materials) onto the boards. An evanescent art form had been transformed and made permanent. An art cooperative called Papunya Tula was organized, and an enthusiasm for painting amounting to a cultural revival got under way. Bardon and other sympathetic outsiders encouraged the Aboriginals to paint not only as a means of expression but also to make some much-needed money.

While many other forms of Aboriginal art have come into being in the years since, the basic principles were laid down at Papunya Tula. Fundamentally, Aboriginal art is based on mythic-historic narratives called Dreamings in English, Tjukurpa in the Aboriginal language. A Dreaming describes the wanderings of a nomadic clan over a certain portion of the landscape and links the people with mythical ancestors that frequently take animal forms. The snake-like curves and dotted lines of the paintings are like paths through the seemingly trackless desert. While they may look to outsiders like decorative, busy abstract designs, they actually contain information and symbolism that Aboriginal viewers easily recognize. Too easily, in some cases. Early in the Papunya Tula movement, heated arguments broke out over accusations that the paintings revealed too much about secret religious knowledge to Aboriginal women and boys who were not initiates. As a result, the practice developed of subtly changing small elements in the designs to neutralize them, ritualistically speaking.

Early Papunya Tula boards, which originally sold for tiny sums sufficient to buy food and gas, are now far and away the most expensive works of Aboriginal art on the global market. The record was set in 2007 when the National Gallery of Australia paid $1.1 million at a Sotheby’s auction for a 1977 board painting called Warlugulong, by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, an artist who had died five years earlier. Emily Kame Kngwarreye, an artist from the Northern Territory who died in 1996 and didn’t even start to paint until she was 80, also became a posthumous market star. A number of her works have sold at auction in the high six figures.

Most aboriginal artworks don’t command prices anywhere near those, and there is a great diversity of styles available on the market today, from various regions of Australia. Julie Harvey, an Australian-born dealer who operates Harvey Art Projects USA in Sun Valley, Idaho, is presenting the work of a cooperative in the South Australian desert called the Ninuku Arts Indigenous Organization. This past spring she brought a selection of paintings to New York, where they were shown at gallery nine5 in SoHo.

Many of the Ninuku artists are women, which Harvey finds stylistically significant. She dates a sea change in aboriginal art to the point in the early 1990s when it ceased to be a mainly male preserve. “When the women came in, that created a really dynamic change,” she says. “They have a very different way of painting to a man. Their approach is gestural and much looser, very exciting, and it really transformed the art. In the last decade we’ve seen the emergence of new art centers, especially in the center of Australia, and they use totally different palettes. Originally it was all ochres, black, white and red earth. Now we’re seeing bright pinks and more. This is one of the most exciting art movements to be a part of, because it’s evolving and changing while staying rooted inside this very solid culture.”

Harvey emphasizes that old as its roots are, Aboriginal art is absolutely contemporary, and that is due as much to the nature of its metaphysics as it is to the fact that the artists are living in the contemporary globalized world. “The Dreamtime,” Harvey says, “is a silly white word for what this whole giant sacred living picture is. It’s a constant thing for an aboriginal artist. It’s not the past, it’s not the future—it’s the present. To them it’s not old. When the ancestors walked across the land and created, that moment has an energy that exists until now. If you listen you can hear the vibration of the land, they say. The Dreamtime is a constant, ongoing play, a scene that is always being enacted.”

John Addison of Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art in Santa Fe is another dealer who is spreading the word about Australian Aboriginal art among American collectors. He also shows Native American art, and he finds the juxtaposition of the two quite revealing in terms of what it means for contemporary art to be connected to ancient traditions. “Being in Santa Fe,” he explains, “I had developed a collector base of Native American art. My theory was to introduce the contemporary Aboriginal art because it has some of the same things going on—coming from the land and not having so much emphasis on the personality as in mainstream contemporary art.”

Addison recalls that when he had his first Aboriginal show, in 2010, 12 artists came from Australia, and they told him that “they’d been to London and Paris, but when they came to the Southwest they could feel the heartbeat of the land in the same way as back home.” They spent time talking about inspiration and process with Pueblo Indian artists Chiaroscuro represents. Despite this meeting of minds, though, Addison sees some major differences between the two groups of indigenous artists: “The Native American artists are dealing with issues of personal and cultural identity. Some live on reservations, others in cities or towns. They’re painting much more about their own personal experience. With the Aboriginals, it’s not so personal; it’s a timeless expression that goes through them. In Australia, by and large, they’re still sticking with forms that have been passed down, as opposed to Native American artists.”

Chiaroscuro, which just had its second group show of Aboriginal art, is focusing on presenting bark paintings from Arnhem Land in far Northern Australia. These artists use natural pigments and achieve a more subdued, contemplative look than the Ninuku artists do. Addison explains why he chose to develop this market rather than trying to stock early acrylic board paintings: “A lot of that work from the ’70s is very expensive, and there’s not a lot of it. It was the beginning of a movement. I wanted to present what is going on now—as a contemporary art gallery, my clients are looking for works on which the paint has just dried. What we have, produced in last couple of years, we get directly from the art centers. I wire the money back to Australia, and it goes to the artists.” The prices for the bark paintings, he says, range from $5,000 to $30,000, with $20,000 being the average.

Addison says that his clients tend not to take an ethnographic or anthropological attitude toward Aboriginal artworks. “We did a lot of educating,” he says, “but in the end the pieces were still judged by the gut reaction one gets standing in front of them, by the aesthetics. When I go to install them in someone’s home here in Santa Fe, it’s interesting to see how they fit into the larger collection. A home might be full of Victorian furniture, and then you see the Aboriginal art on the wall. You go into these old adobe mansions, and the people are minimalists and collecting white-on white-paintings. The Aboriginal art is often hanging next to contemporary artists of all ilks.”

The education process is being helped along by museum shows in the U.S. Currently, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., is presenting “Crossing Cultures,” an exhibition, on view through March 10, of over 100 works donated to the museum from a major American private collection, that of Will Owen and Harvey Wagner. While it covers the 1970s through today, the collection focuses on newer Aboriginal art. In addition to a wide variety of paintings, there are sculptures—some of them quite non-traditional in form—and photographs. Aboriginal photographer Destiny Deacon’s edgy images depict Aboriginal people within the context of the Australian urban experience, a completely different take on contemporary Aboriginal experience than a Dreaming image on bark. According to Stephen Gilchrist, curator of Indigenous Australian art at the Hood, “The objects included in this exhibition reference and reinvigorate traditional iconographies, speak to the history and legacy of colonization, and meaningfully contribute to the growing international discourse on contemporary Indigenous art.”

Whether or not it engages directly with the globalized world, whether or not it takes on political content, Aboriginal art is relevant to the present. “Indigenous Australians have the longest tradition of continuous artistic production on the planet,” says Harvey. “But it’s only in the last 40 years that we’ve had a market for this work to make it possible for all the world to see it. Although it’s based on ancient traditions, it’s not primitive, it’s not ethnographic. It’s so contemporary; it operates on so many levels—that’s what makes it so exciting.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Spring Thaw

Mar 30th-Apr 27th 2013

Please note: Opening Reception is Friday, April 5, 5-7pm.

Chiaroscuro presents its fourth annual Spring Thaw group show, featuring an eclectic selection of new artwork from represented gallery artists and new guest artists.  The work from represented artists includes wall sculpture by Chip Dunahugh, mixed media abstract paintings by Katherine Chang Liu, several new figurative oil paintings by Michele Mikesell from her series Freezing the Octopus.  Mikesell explains: “It is common practice in the Mediterranean to freeze an octopus prior to culinary preparation.  The act of freezing it breaks up the internal fibers and tenderizes it for consumption.”  Mikesell extends the metaphor by revisiting historical events and reinterpreting the imagery for the contemporary eye.

Furthermore, we are pleased to introduce two long time Santa Fe artists Colleen Drake and Bonnie Bishop.  Drake debuts a grouping of powerful large-scale gestural abstractions in blue. We discovered this incredible body of work this winter and are pleased to be the first Santa Fe gallery to show the “blue paintings.”

Bishop will present large-scale color photographs of windows in which she seeks to convey “the mystery behind the parted curtain”.  All part of a recent project in Kyoto, Japan, these subtle images come alive with multiple layers of color and texture, transcending the photographic medium to read as brilliant abstractions.

Spring Thaw

Mar 30th-Apr 27th 2013

Opening Reception: Friday, April 5, 5-7pm.

High resolution photographs available upon request; call Heather Doyle at 505-992-0711 or email gallery@chiaroscurosantafe.com

Location: Chiaroscuro, 702 ½ & 708 Canyon Road on

Gypsy Alley, Santa Fe, NM 87501, 505-992-0711

www.chiaroscurosantafe.com

This week we enter the final round of our Revolving Winter Group Show.   We recently re-hung both gallery spaces on Gypsy Alley to display a regal sweep of large-scale photography by Renate Aller juxtaposed with the contemporary abstraction of sculptor Peter Millett and Navajo painter Emmi Whitehorse.  We’ve included two newly arrived prints from Swiss-born photographer Irene Kung.  Albero Neve evokes the serenity of a snowy winter evening, while Palma Rosa’s warm hues bring to mind the not-so-distant seasons of spring and summer.

An energetic, tribal feel unites the front room in our main space.  We’ve mixed the totem-like spirit poles of Louisiana-born artist John Geldersma with the bright acrylic and earth pigments of paintings from our second biennial exhibition Australian Contemporary Indigenous Art II in July 2012.

Our Revolving Winter Group Show is a great chance to experience a unique, aesthetic arrangement of a variety of works in our two beautiful Canyon Road spaces.  Please join us to jump start a new year destined to be full of exciting exhibitions!  Check out our 2013 schedule here as we continue to fill in the details.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Lost Christmas Gift: Images & Artifacts 

Andrew Beckham    

&

Holiday Group Show  

November 23 – December 29, 2012   

Opening reception for both exhibitions: Saturday, November 24, 5-7pm 

Santa Fe - In conjunction with the recent release of his new book, The Lost Christmas Gift, Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art is delighted to offer a special holiday exhibition of the images and artifacts of artist/writer Andrew Beckham.  Original pages of the journal, packaging and letters will be accompanied by a selection of limited edition, mixed media works from the project.

Below is a brief description of the book from Beckham‘s website:

After seventy years, a package arrives in the mail unlooked for, a lost gift from father to son.  Now a great-grandfather himself, Emerson unwraps a decades-old Christmas present from his departed father, a handmade book recounting the extraordinary boyhood adventure he shared with his dad one Christmas long ago.  With maps, drawings, watercolors and photographs, this artifact and family heirloom recounts a mountainous winter landscape alive with mysterious encounters and life-changing gifts. (Published by Princeton Architectural Press, Fall 2012.)

This is a rare and wonderful opportunity to view and purchase original artwork from a book that acclaimed author Pam Houston has said deserves “to become part of the Holiday tradition in countless families. The story is deeply moving, the artwork, simply sublime.”

Holiday Group Show

Location: 708 & 702 ½ Canyon Road on Gypsy Alley, Santa Fe, NM 87501, 505-992-0711

High resolution photographs available; call Heather Doyle at 505-992-0711 or email gallery@chiaroscurosantafe.com