Archive for April, 2009

Who: Meyer Gallery
What: Milt Kobayashi exhibition
When: Now through August 6th, 2009
Where: Meyer Gallery, 225 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM
Contact: (505) 983-1434

All events will take place at Meyer Gallery located at 225 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501.  Unless otherwise noted all events will take place on a Friday from 5pm to 7pm.  Events are open to change.

There is a quiet sophistication in Milt Kobayashi’s oil painted canvases, summoning a pensive, ethereal feeling in the viewer. Kobayashi’s subjects are people from another time and place and, yet, they are strangely familiar. They are urban dwellers lost in thought as they take a momentary respite from their routine. Kobayashi’s people are absorbed in the world of contemplation and meditation - making the attractively aloof.

A third generation Japanese-American, Kobayashi was born in New York City, soon after that his family moved to Oahu, Hawaii, and then ventured to Los Angeles when he was eight. After receiving his B.A. in 1970 from the University of California - Los Angeles, Kobayashi began working as an illustrator. However he found his work, which was quite editorial in its nature, did not fit the Los Angeles commercial art market. In 1977, Kobayashi returned to New York City. After returning to New York, a casual visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art permanently altered Kobayashi’s artistic direction and prompted a career change. There he saw Velazquez’s portrait Juan de Paraja.

He began studying the works of Whistler, Chase and Sargent, who were also influenced by Velazquez. Strangely enough, it was through his study of Western masters, especially Whistler, that Kobayashi became aware of Japanese art and “the Japanese floating world of Edo”. He began studying the 16th and 17th century Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock print masters Hokasai, Sharaku and Utamaro. Ukiyo-e is defined as “pictures of the floating world,” depicting characters in the constantly changing motions of life. The whole perspective of Japanese art allures him - the patterns, color harmonies, use of negative space, and primarily, composition and design.

Kobayashi has received two major awards: the National Academy of Design’s Ranger Purchased Award and the Allied Arts Silver Medal. His work has appeared in Forbes, Fortune, and Reader’s Digest magazines. In September of 1997, Kobayashi was a featured guest artist at the Artist of America show in Denver, CO.

The close date for this show is August 6th, 2009.
For more New Mexico information visit www.new-mexico-visitor.com

Who: Charlotte Jackson Fine Art
What: Elliot Norquist: Full Circle exhibition
When: May 1 - May 31, 2009
Where: Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, 200 West Marcy Street, Suite 101
Contact: (505) 989.8688, www.charlottejackson.com

A solo exhibition of new work, Full Circle by Elliot Norquist will open at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art on May 1 and extend through May 31  An opening reception with the artist will be held on Friday, May 1 from 5-7:30 p.m.  The gallery is located at 200 West Marcy Street, Suite 101.

To write about the work of Elliot Norquist is to be endlessly tempted to use the word irony.  Ironic that a man passionate about nature (skiing, mountaineering-living on a former dairy farm 45 miles from the nearest store where you can stare at a 100 miles horizon with nothing man-made to be seen) creates works of high sophistication and abstraction.  Ironic that someone with Norquist’s infectious exuberance makes works of quiet, contemplative minimalism.

But irony isn’t a useful concept.  Step beyond simple polarity and you see that Norquist’s work and life lie squarely in the province of art: paradox.  William Blake wrote, “Without Contraries is no progression,” echoing an idea posited by the Taoists that the very universe itself would not exist if not for the meeting of opposites.  Norquist’s work dances between a series of contraries: the circle in the square, the simple in the complex, the personal in the abstract, the natural in what is man-made

Full Circle plays not only on Norquist’s new exploration of the circle form but on his return to color.  At the time his son was born, Norquist created a series of brightly colorful pieces in joyous response to fatherhood.  Now he returns to color in celebration of his son’s imminent adulthood in a way that is playful and yet thoughtful.  The pieces continue with the process and materials he has been working with for decades.  Layers of sheet metal, cardboard, and bondo are carefully cut, sanded, and primed into shapes which hang on the wall, not quite painting, not quite sculpture.  While the edges are sanded they remain uncovered, an archeological layering which shows his process and that is allowed to remain readable by the viewer.

Shape and color are all important.  A square with a circle cut from the center, a circle with a square cut.  A brilliant orange and a vibrant red meet at the axis of a circle.  Norquist uses the sparest of visual vocabularies.  Color and shape must retain their integrity and yet merge to become art.   Contraries again and again.

Norquist describes this precarious walk through contraries in an elegant way.  Speaking again of his son, a competitive extreme skier, he remarks that in a race the best line is often closet to no line at all, closest also to disaster.  For Norquist resolution lies in the work itself.  Where the no-line exists, the place where ideas like irony or contrary are meaningless, is in the circle itself, common yet somehow magical, in color itself, personal yet eternal.  In Elliot Norquist’s Full Circle we find works that ride that dangerous line where opposites meet and beauty happens.

For more New Mexico information visit www.new-mexico-visitor.com

Who: Aaron Payne Fine Art
What: Joe Merlino photography exhibit
When: May 15 - June 10th, 2009
Where: Aaron Payne Fine Art, 213 Marcy Street
Contact: (505) 995-9779

Aaron Payne Fine Art is pleased to announce its first photography exhibition featuring works by Santa Fe resident, Joe Merlino.

This exhibition coincides with the 20th anniversary of the violent government crackdown against student protesters in Tiananmen Square, Beijing on June 4th 1989. This event is often described as the June 4th Incident in contemporary China.

Joe Merlino was traveling in China during May and June of 1989. He was in Tiananmen Square when the largest crowds of protesters gathered to voice support for democratic reforms and denounce corruption. As Merlino continued his tour of China, the mood and direction of the country changed abruptly in the wake of the government’s violent suppression and subsequent persecution of the student protesters. The 18 photographs on exhibit reflect this transformation in what they depict and what is absent.

Joe Merlino lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife and their daughter. Born and raised in New Jersey, Merlino studied history and cultural anthropology at Harvard before starting a career providing strategic advice in philanthropy and cause-related enterprise. Merlino has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Central and South America, Western Europe, India, Africa and East Asia. In addition to the June 4th Incident in China, Merlino also inadvertently experienced political turmoil firsthand in Cote D’Ivoire, West Africa in the days leading up to that country’s first coup d’état in 1999. This is his first exhibition.

A portion of the proceeds from this exhibition will go to Project Tibet, Santa Fe.

For more New Mexico information visit www.new-mexico-visitor.com