Flowing Forms presents four contemporary painters whose work explores formal concerns through abstraction. Using a variety of approaches to their work, each artist utilizes bold colors, mark-making, pattern and material application to create intricate compositions inspired by their environments. Waterhouse & Dodd is pleased to announce the new representation of three of these artists: Martin Brouillette, Danielle Frankenthal and Iris Kufert-Rivo.
Martin Brouillette
Motivated by bright colors, bold shapes, and playful compositions, Brouillette works from a formalist approach while directing his concerns towards composition, pattern, structure, space, and the interactions of colors. The succession of layers in of his paintings is meticulously planned; each meant to complement, enhance, or discredit each other deliberately. He uses digital tools to solve compositional dilemmas while they culminate in tactile human intervention.
Danielle Frankenthal
Frankenthal's works are about light, in all its valences: as the specific light which is color; as the most humanly perceivable form of pure energy which allows us sight; and as the great spiritual metaphor. Her formalistic concerns are mark and color over a strong albeit sometimes elusive substructure. She paints on transparent Acrylite® layers to mimic the way adults see and to call their attention to that seeing which is through their cultural programming and life experiences.
Iris Kufert-Rivo
The artist's recent work, The Structure Series, is inspired by her surrounding urban environment. These paintings are a platform for the creative states that she experiences as an artist and a human being. The Structure Series has become a metaphor for our conflicting times. Social, political, personal, and economic upheaval is always experienced, processed and then restructured.
These paintings examine the constructs of intellect and emotion through the repetitive use of the square, how it is presented and organized, and how color characterizes the psychology of the works.
Laura Newman
Newman's paintings conjure up varied moods that lead the viewer down non-verbal paths of visual exploration. One painting may suggest night walks in a city under construction while others suggest dreamscapes of layered experience; others still are closer to being pure abstraction. Thus, as is often the case in Newman’s work, planes, marks and strokes perform double duty, typifying her disregard for the separation between abstraction and representation by weaving identifiable forms into an abstract image. The points of departure for her paintings are instances in her life. She draws upon the world around her, from memories and places or from speculative reality. Compositional ambiguity, a thickening of atmosphere and a sense of disruption add to an already robust list of qualities and information that establish spatial inversions, engendering a sense of negation and contradiction.
For additional information on the exhibition or any of the artists, please contact the New York gallery at newyork@waterhousedodd.com or by phone at (212) 717-9100.