K E N I S E B AR N E S F I N E AR T
Cool and Collected ‘18 August 2 – September 1, 2018
Cool and Collected ‘18 August 2 – September 1, 2018 Curated by Lani Holloway and Avery Syrig
Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to present the fourth iteration of our emerging artist exhibition series Cool and Collected. Five artists age 35 and under were meticulously vetted by the exhibition’s curators, gallery manager Lani Holloway and associate Avery Syrig, who are themselves under 30. The show introduces new artistic explorations and movements within the millennial generation. Luscious painting in a variety of media by Katie Barrie (Richmond, VA), Rebecca Levitan (Providence, RI), Laini Nemett (Long Island City, NY), Alex Osborne (Brooklyn, NY and Paris, France), and Sophie Treppendahl (Richmond, VA) exemplify how the younger generation of artists stays cool and collected in these trying times and the last hot days of summer.
on the cover: Sophie Treppendahl, Physical Attraction (Coney Island), 2017 oil on canvas, 48 x 69.75 inches, $5000.
KATIE BARRIE
STATEMENT
My practice is centered in the perceptive and psychological effects of color and geometric abstraction. Influenced by architecture, midcentury modernism, the history of utopias, and color theory, my aim is to create works that dance along the border between attractive and ugly. Notions of taste, playfulness, and rigidity permeate throughout controlled compositions while moments of tackiness sneak in. Channeling hard edge abstraction, design archetypes, and subjective perception, my method of working is a way for me to process what color can come to represent for an individual. My most recent work is influenced by the hyper-designed resort community in northern Michigan that I have spent every summer at with my family. There are extensive architectural guidelines restricting what one can and cannot do to their home, and this uncompromising attitude pervades into the social culture of a place of utmost leisure. I’m intrigued by the idea of utopian communities, how they evolve over time, and the effects they have on the social structure of those permitted to be a member. My mother is an interior designer and a member of the Architectural Committee, presuming a dominate role in the aesthetics of our home and those surrounding us. Our house always looks like it is ready to be photographed for a magazine. Messes are unacceptable, while certain colors, textures, and patterns are never permitted. But within this home, it’s ok for a little sand to be on the floor - it implies you were just getting tan or having a cocktail on the beach. image: Katie Barrie in her studio
detail: Spring Break
Katie Barrie, Spring Break, 2017 highload acrylic on canvas 60 x 48 inches, $6000.
detail: Pink Polos and Tennis Elbow
Katie Barrie, Pink Polos and Tennis Elbow, 2018 highload acrylic on canvas, 18 x 12 inches, $400.
detail: Bright Colors Will Be Permitted with the Approval of the Architectural Committee
Katie Barrie, Bright Colors Will Be Permitted with the Approval of the Architectural Committee, 2018 highload acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 inches, $300.
Rebecca Levitan, studio view
REBECCA LEVITAN
STATEMENT
We live in a world where wildly different images are presented together and given equal weight. Photos, ads, and strange hybrids of multiple formats all dwell on the same lamppost or newsfeed. In this landscape, it is impossible to see any image from a single perspective. Faced with the sensory overload this brings, we often construct realities that shut out different viewpoints. I too feel overwhelmed by the information I am bombarded with daily, but also find it one of the most exciting things about working as an artist today. It challenges me to make paintings that embrace the chaos as a way to broaden the subjects and audience for painting by offering dense perceptual and emotional experiences of mundane moments. I am especially interested in creating work that contends with attempts to create order out of the chaos and apocalyptic mood that seems to have swept the country. I am fascinated that many in Silicon Valley feel that the best response to societal problems is to create luxury bunkers to escape to when the revolution comes, instead of trying to prevent catastrophic collapse. I am also interested in their DIY cousins—survivalists who treat seed storing and jerky making like top- secret military missions. And these gun-loving survivalists have a surprising amount in common with New Agers who also question the veracity of widely accepted facts. These subcultures, and others that I explore in my work, have a complicated relationship with reality. Some may want to return to the purity and “truth” nature represents but develop complicated man-made systems in order to do it. Others badly mimic nature with design touches like astroturf and faux-windows. I find that the design of domestic items is a locus for the kinds of shifting, borrowing, and mistranslation I am interested in. For example, in 201213, I lived and traveled in the Arabian Gulf. Every city I visited had an “old souk,” purporting to sell the best traditional wares and crammed with carpet shops. Many of these shops, run by people of all nationalities, sold carpets machine- made in China. Thus, new designs from China, based on traditional Arabic ones, were being introduced and accepted by locals and tourists as traditional. This world is full of such domestic objects. They are frequently bad copies of the original, or peculiar hybrids created when different cultures come into contact. They are often changed in a way that is unintended by the makers, and unremarked upon by the consumers. In contrast, I want my paintings to honestly engage with multiple underlying traditions of making, while acknowledging the murkiness of how those traditions are used and what they represent. In order to accomplish this, I do extensive and eclectic research, leading me to the library but also to learn how to weave and make wallpaper. I am constantly trying new processes in my paintings to give voice to the perspectives and traditions of making I am investigating. A single painting may reference digital icons, photography, and textiles, and combine scraping, printing, spraying, masking, and different painting styles.Going forward, I hope to expand the perspectives I paint from, and create paintings that start to work together to tell a larger story about our contemporary world. This story will not have a single through-line, but instead reveal the surprising overlap of seemingly incompatible perspectives. When we isolate and forget where our images come from we lose context: we don’t see how we are connected and how what we do affects others. Lately, I have been thinking of each of my paintings as a matriarch who has managed to get her squabbling family to sit down for a moment of peace at Thanksgiving dinner. It may not make sense immediately that the components of a particular painting coexist but presenting these juxtapositions in a convincing way expands the viewer's understanding of the possibilities of painting and the world it invokes.
detail: Within Reach
Rebecca Levitan, Within Reach, 2016 watercolor on panel, 20 x 16 inches, $1900.
detail: Philosophia Perennis (II)
Rebecca Levitan, Philosophia Perennis (II), 2017 acrylic on canvas,21.5 x 21.5 inches,$2500.
detail: First Day of Spring
Rebecca Levitan, First Day of Spring, 2017 watercolor on panel, 36.75 x 49 inches, $4500.
detail: Astroturf
Rebecca Levitan, Astroturf, 2017 watercolor on panel, 9 x 12 inches, $1200.
detail: Glow Powder (Afterimage)
Rebecca Levitan, Glow Powder (Afterimage), 2017 watercolor on panel, 36.5 x 49 inches, $4500.
LAINI NEMETT
STATEMENT
My work responds to personal histories housed within aging buildings, and to the possibilities of what and who might inhabit the skeletons of new constructions. I collage and collapse planes to conjure the passing of time and generations of lives lived between the walls, beams, and floorboards. I build small cardboard models of composite environments that appear believable at first glance, yet are not architecturally logical. These models act as reference for immersive oil paintings that explore a personal sense of place. In the boroughs of New York, old facades are painted away or torn down as new anonymous condo projects begin almost every day. The expansive land of Wyoming holds hundred-yearold ranches and hand-built homesteads remaining as physical mementos of multiple generations. In post-Katrina New Orleans, plots of land sit empty and houses are reduced to piles with remnants of a family’s life peeking through the refuse. As I paint, I discover the parallels of life and loss across cultures, and the collective ways we understand the idea of home.
image: Laini Nemett in her studio
detail: Knockdown Center (After Okada and Abbott)
Laini Nemett, Knockdown Center (After Okada and Abbott), 2016 oil on linen, 60 x 78.25 inches, $7800.
detail: Bergenfield
Laini Nemett, Bergenfield, 2016 oil on linen, 41 x 76.5 inches, $7000.
detail: Four-Cornered Dawn
Laini Nemett, Four-Cornered Dawn, 2015 oil on linen, 82 x 47.5 inches, $8200.
detail: 28 Regent St
Laini Nemett, 28 Regent St, 2016 oil on linen, 37.75 x 30 inches, $2900.
detail: June
Laini Nemett, June, 2016 oil on linen, 8 x 21 inches, $750. (framed)
Alex Osborne in his studio
ALEX OSBORNE
STATEMENT
detail: ELECTRIC BURRATA
Alex Osborne, ELECTRIC BURRATA, 2017 dye sublimation print on aluminum, 40 x 40 inches, edition 3/3, $3750.
detail: LAYERS
Alex Osborne, LAYERS, 2017 dye sublimation print on aluminum, 40 x 40 inches, edition 2/3, $3750.
detail: STEPPING BACK
Alex Osborne, STEPPING BACK, 2017 dye sublimation print on aluminum, 40 x 40 inches, edition 2/3, $3750.
detail: UNTITLED 111
Alex Osborne, UNTITLED 111, 2017 dye sublimation print on aluminum, 40 x 40 inches, edition 2/3, $3750.
image: Sophie Treppendahl in her studio
detail: Gold James
Sophie Treppendahl, Gold James, 2017 oil on canvas, 48 x 70 inches, $5000.
detail: That Summer Feeling (is gonna haunt you for the rest of your days)
Sophie Treppendahl That Summer Feeling (is gonna haunt you for the rest of your days), 2017 oil on canvas, 38.75 x 49.75 inches, $4000.
detail: Rawlings Quarry
Sophie Treppendahl, Rawlings Quarry, 2018 oil on canvas, 28 x 32 inches, $1800.
detail: Pool Chairs, raft and a yellow noodle
Sophie Treppendahl, Pool Chairs, raft and a yellow noodle, 2018 oil on canvas, 26 x 30 inches, $1500.
detail: Striped Shirt and Sperrys
Sophie Treppendahl, Striped Shirt and Sperrys, 2018 oil on canvas, 34 x 28 inches, $1800.
Please contact the gallery for images of the work included in the exhibition. Or for images from others bodies of work by these artists. Kenise Barnes Fine Art offers complimentary consulting services, artwork on approval, delivery and installation services.
K E N I S E BAR N E S F I N E AR T Was founded in 1994 on the belief that art is essential We are a gallery and art consulting firm representing emerging and mid-career, investment-quality artists. Our program includes over fifty artists working in a variety of mediums. The gallery mounts more than a dozen exhibitions annually in our exhibition space in Larchmont, NY as well as curating exhibitions for outside venues. Kenise Barnes Fine Art is an experienced art consulting firm. We guide both residential and corporate collectors and work collaboratively with designers and architects to provide and source artwork for projects of all sizes. Our client list includes New York University Langone Medical Center, Montefiore Medical Center, Bank of America Art Program, Pfizer Corporation, Citibank Art Advisory, Vicente Wolf Associates, and numerous museums and private collectors. Kenise Barnes, director Kenise@kbfa.com Lani Holloway, gallery manager Lani@kbfa.com B. Avery Syrig, sales, art handling and logistics Avery@kbfa.com 1947 Palmer Avenue, Larchmont, New York 10538
914 834 8077
www.KBFA.com