K E N I S E B AR N E S F I N E AR T
Cool & Collected ’19
Please contact the gallery for images of the artwork or for additional information. Kenise Barnes Fine Art offers complimentary in–home consulting, artwork on approval, shipping and delivery and installation services.
KENISE BARNES FINE ART 1947 Palmer Avenue Larchmont, NY 10538 914 834 8077 7 Fulling Lane Kent CT 06757 860 592 0220
Cool & Collected ’19 July 18 – September 7, 2019 Mark Bartkiw, Julie Maren, Siobhan McBride, Vicki Sher, Audrey Stone, Kit Warren curated by Kenise Barnes and Lani Holloway
cover: Audrey Stone Here, 2016 –’17 flashe on canvas 17 x 17 inches $2800.
opposite page: Mark Bartkiw Blaze, 2018 c-print (photograph) mounted on Dibond with acrylic face mount 42 x 42 inches edition AP 3 $3400. detail: Blaze
detail: Fusion
opposite page: Mark Bartkiw Fusion, 2019 c-print (photograph) mounted on Dibond with acrylic face mount 42 x 42 inches edition AP 3 $3400.
detail: Lakeshore
opposite page: Mark Bartkiw Lakeshore, 2018 c-print (photograph) mounted on Dibond with acrylic face mount 42 x 42 inches edition AP 3 $3400.
image: Mark Bartkiw
MARK BARTKIW The imaginary world has unlimited potential. When I reach back into my childhood where I could create anything and was totally in charge, I created scenes and worlds that were my alternate and necessary reality. As an artist, this has evolved into the opportunity to revive play in order to create implied narratives.
detail: Last Resort
opposite page: Mark Bartkiw Last Resort, 2019 c-print (photograph) mounted on Dibond with acrylic face mount 42 x 42 inches edition AP 3 $3400.
detail: Botanica 3
opposite page: Julie Maren Botanica 3, 2019 acorn tops, paint, glass, mica, geode, brass 28 x 70 inches $8500.
JULIE MAREN Dot patterns have inhabited my paintings for decades — traversing the surfaces, weaving in and out of the central imagery, functioning as background, marking space and time. However, after the dots began overtaking my paintings a few years ago, the right angles and flat surfaces of my canvas no longer felt right, so I started to explore ways in which the dots could exist autonomously. I found my solution at a National Park artist residency in Connecticut, surrounded by woods blanketed in fallen acorns. I began filling the caps with paint and found them to be the perfect vehicle to transcend the recurring circular patterns in my paintings by taking the patterns out of their rectangular confines and turning them into natural and multi-dimensional clouds or murmurations of color, depth and space. These wall sculptures appear as bouncing dots of color projected at different depths on the wall. Each dot is unique and filled with multiple layers of paint, glass or natural materials, including mica and crystals. The combination of the natural, familiar acorn tops filled with synthetic materials in eerie, and sometimes unnatural colors feels familiar yet mysterious. I like using florescent and intense colors because it feels like I am reanimating the shells that nature has discarded into new seductive organisms which appear to glow from within. Sometimes they swarm together in biomorphic patterns, like organisms exploring a new surface or appear ready to burst from the wall. Nature informs my work — from the microscopic worlds of bioluminescent organisms on beaches, my mushroom hunting expeditions, the growth patterns of lichen and colorful gardens, to the macrocosm of star galaxies above. I think of my installations as three dimensional paintings, in which the essence of my subject matter is distilled into color and pattern and each becomes an exploration in expansiveness, as I leave the boundaries of the canvas behind.
image: Julie Maren
detail: Gray Diapason
opposite page: Siobhan McBride Gray Diapason, 2016 gouache on paper mounted on panel 16 x 20 inches $4000.
detail: Lemon and Diego
Siobhan McBride Lemon and Diego, 2016 gouache on paper mounted on panel 11 x 14 inches $3200.
detail: Tank
opposite page: Siobhan McBride Tank, 2015 acrylic gouache on paper mounted on panel 12 x 16 inches $3400.
SIOBHAN McBRIDE The paintings are views of a place that is intimate and familiar, airless, with sound tamped out. Elements lock together, tectonically tense, creating a sense of anxiety and anticipation, or slip past one another like playing cards. I want the scenes to feel full of potential energy, as if the space is prickly with static, charged with the anticipation of an encounter, or blushing in its aftermath. The paintings are descriptions of weird and quotidian experiences, passages from books, film fragments, things caught in the corner of my eye, and an attempt to conjure slippery memories. The paintings are, simultaneously, diagrams for understanding events from the past, and puzzles to decode experiences not yet had. I hope the work is strange and suspenseful like the excitement of exploring a new place, and the thrill of knowing you are drifting back into a frightening dream.
image: Siobhan McBride
detail: Roommate
opposite page: Siobhan McBride Roommate, 2019 gouache on paper mounted on panel 14 x 11 inches $3200.
detail: Mango
opposite page: Siobhan McBride Mango, 2019 gouache on paper mounted on panel 8 x 10 inches $2900.
detail: Rehearsal
opposite page: Siobhan McBride Rehearsal, 2019 acrylic gouache on paper mounted on panel 5.25 x 7.25 inches $2400.
detail: True Crime
opposite page: Siobhan McBride True Crime, 2016 gouache on paper mounted on panel 16 x 12 inches $3400
detail: Untitled 2
opposite page: Vicki Sher Untitled 2, 2019 oil pastel on drafting film 43.75 x 33.75 inches $4600. (framed)
detail: Untitled 1
Vicki Sher Untitled 1, 2019 oil pastel on drafting film 43.75 x 33.75 inches $4600. (framed)
VICKI SHER I work intuitively, making what I want to see. I start each new surface, paper or canvas, with color or line, and proceed in dialogue with the material. Often it seems the drawing knows what it wants to be. This recent work distills everyday objects and figures into geometric shapes. A semicircle is a bowl, a moon, a mountain, a breast, etc. Shapes float, stack up, interact, and act as stand-ins for everyday activity. The work stems as a logical progression from earlier interests in still life, domestic life and the poetry of the quotidian, but it is also a sudden and dramatic departure. These drawings are unapologetically concerned with beauty and decoration, balance, movement, and pleasure. Reducing imagery to shapes creates a new language. The endless possibility of these colorful building blocks has introduced more play into my studio practice. So while a quiet, deadpan sensibility still thrives, there is a new voice, singing, in vibrant color, and giving emphasis to joy and beauty. Working on translucent drafting film allows me to layer the image, creating depth, and with that added space, more room for an open-ended result. The material supports a long held interest in describing multi-layered experiences even within a pared-down composition, to hint at something without over-directing the narrative. I believe that underneath the busy-ness of daily activity lies a quieter hum of human experience, the emotional realm: remote, inaudible and changeable. Drawing, with its wordless intensity, is the perfect tool to describe this parallel universe. Drawing has a specific power. It is more direct than painting, as it eliminates many issues that have to do with medium management: mixing color, building a surface, etc. and goes straight to the question “what do you want to make?� Drawing, in its deliberateness, is more honestly representative of something essential to art-making: the self. At the same time, it is an activity that is mysterious and unfathomable. Sitting down to make a drawing can feel like a trip to the unknowable and uncontrollable. This duality, between purposeful intention and wild abandon, on which all artists, consciously or not, take a position, plays out dramatically in drawing where both sides of the paradox are most pronounced.
Image: Vicki Sher in her studio Photo Credit: Atisha Paulson
Vicki Sher Untitled 3, 2019 oil pastel on drafting film 43.75 x 33.75 inches $4600. (framed)
detail: Dark Pour
Audrey Stone Dark Pour, 2018 flashe on canvas 50 x 40 inches $8000.
detail: By Heart
opposite page: Audrey Stone By Heart, 2019 flashe and acrylic medium on canvas 20 x 16 inches $2800.
detail: Here opposite page: Audrey Stone Here, 2016-’17 flashe on canvas 17 x 17 inches $2800.
AUDREY STONE I have been occupied with line and color for some time; subtle color gradients have recently become a prominent element in my work. Observing shifting color and light in nature is an ecstatic experience for me. I find myself experiencing simultaneous excitement and calm, producing a desire to bring this dynamic opposition into my work. In my current paintings, I use the boundaries between broad and narrow bands of adjacent colors to generate visual vibrations. I am intrigued by the way the eye and brain process these transitions between colors, informing the viewer’s emotional and physical response to the work. Image: Audrey Stone in her studio
detail: Through Through
opposite page: Audrey Stone Through Through, 2019 flashe on canvas 50 x 40 inches $8000
detail: Sitting Close
detail: Sitting Close
opposite page: Audrey Stone Sitting Close, 2018 flashe on canvas 30 x 30 inches $5000.
opposite page: Audrey Stone Together and Apart, 2017 flashe and acrylic medium on canvas 17 x 7 inches (each) $2600. detail: Together and Apart
detail: Altered States (passage)
opposite page: Kit Warren Altered States (passage), 2019 acrylic and flashe on birch panel 36 x 36 inches $6500.
detail: Words (FB)
opposite page: Kit Warren Words (FB), 2019 acrylic and metallic pigment on paper 55 x 55 inches $6000. (unframed)
image: Kit Warren in her studio
KIT WARREN Three connected bodies of work – Hover, Words and Altered States – come together in my newest paintings, all densely pigmented metallic acrylics on a rich velvety matte ground. Depending on the angle of the lighting and the position of the viewer, the words or shapes become distinct, obscured or revealed by the light, and by the density of the marks that surround them. The metallic paint appears to be a shimmering scrim floating on the dark blackboard-like ground. My paintings use visual and written language to explore the weight and significance of intention in a mark, whether it be the deliberate information contained in lines that make up a word, or the figurative suggestions contained within the horizontal and vertical lines, and the circle. They question the boundaries of a written sign system; what happens and what does it mean when marks dissolve into meaninglessness or conversely cohere into significance?
detail: Veiled Dangle (green)
Opposite page: Kit Warren Veiled Dangle (green), 2019 acrylic and flashe on paper 56 x 42 inches $5000. (unframed)
K E N I S E B AR N E S F I N E AR T Because Art is Essential With a focus on unique and exceptional contemporary art Kenise Barnes Fine Art represents more than 50 emerging and midcareer artists working in all media. We have a wide selection of paintings, drawings, photography and sculpture as well as consulting services and collecting advice for the burgeoning to the seasoned collector. In addition to our curated exhibitions that change every six weeks, we maintain a large inventory of work from our artists’ studios in our on-site warehouses. As a professional art consulting firm, we also source work from our wide network of artist’s studios, galleries, and auction houses. We work extensively with architects, interior designers, art advisors and home owners to find the perfect fit whether it is an entire collection or one special piece. Kenise Barnes Fine Art has two locations; in May 2019 we opened in the stunning Kent Barns complex in Kent, CT. The first gallery continues in our street-level gallery in the charming village of Larchmont, New York, 25 minutes from New York City on Metro-North where we have been located for 25 years. Kenise Barnes, director Kenise@kbfa.com
Lani Holloway, associate director, Larchmont Lani@kbfa.com
Noelia Abreu, sales and admin. support Noelia@kbfa.com
Sophie Millette, admin. support
Eli McHugh, admin. support Kent@kbfa.com 1947 Palmer Avenue, Larchmont, New York 10538 7 Fulling Lane, Kent, CT 06757
914 834 8077 860 592 0220
www.KBFA.com