Turner Carroll | 25th Anniversary | 2016

2016 Exhibition Schedule Celebrating 25 Years of Joy in Art!

Twenty-five years ago (June 1, 1991), Michael Carroll and Tonya Turner Carroll opened the doors of Turner Carroll Gallery, at 725 Canyon Road—the same location it occupies today.

The two had little, other than a dream, degrees in art/history, and a true love of art, to fuel their ambitions. Theirs is a story of courage and risk, and an example of how following your bliss is the most meaningful path to manifesting success.

Turner Carroll studied art history at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar. She went on Stanford’s Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome, and to Hebrew University, Jerusalem, as a Raoul Wallenberg Scholar. She worked with Sotheby’s in London, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Israel Museum, and two contemporary galleries in Santa Fe. Carroll studied history and the arts at Duke University, NYU, and Leningrad State University. He worked for experimental theater great Ping Chong, and at La Mama Theater in New York. Turner and Carroll met working on a multi-media performance work at Duke University in 1989.

Turner and Carroll were certain they wanted to open a gallery only if it could survive showing artists whose works they were passionate about; artists with whom they believed they could make a difference in the history of art. And they have done just that! They have written books on their artists, curated exhibitions internationally, and exhibited their artists’ works in some of the most prestigious museums and art fairs.

Turner Carroll has launched and furthered the careers of many contemporary artists whose works have been shown in major museums throughout the world, including the

Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Louvre, Belvedere Museum (Vienna), Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Vatican Museum, and many more.

Turner and Carroll continue to seek out artists whose works provoke social change/ social reflection. Some of their best-known artists are Chinese painter Hung Liu, who grew up under Mao, and Traian Filip, head of Romania’s State Engraving Studios during the rule of horrendous dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Their interest in the intersection of science and art precipitated their representation of such artists as Shawn Smith and Rusty Scruby.

Turner and Carroll have served as President of the Santa Fe Gallery Association and SFGA founding board member for Art Smart—the philanthropic association that raises money for art programs in public schools. Tonya served on New Mexico Museum of Art’s Friends of Contemporary Art Board. Turner and Carroll created ArteMita, an art project in Mexico, which brought Mexican contemporary artists into small villages to teach classes to local children. Through ArteMita, they curated Mexican Contemporary Art for the Four Seasons and St. Regis resorts, in Punta Mita, Mexico. Funds raised through their exhibitions benefited art programs at Costa Verde International School.

They continue to support art in schools by holding workshops at schools on the Navajo Nation, as well as helping the Visual Arts Department at Albuquerque Academy, by featuring a juried selection of high school student artworks in an annual exhibition at Turner Carroll.

This 25th anniversary provides a time of reflection and anticipation for Turner Carroll.

Throughout this exhibition season, Turner Carroll will feature a stellar lineup of its most eagerly collected artists, as well as some exciting new additions!

Scott Greene: Course of Empire Through April 24: Scott Greene, Course of Empire, at Turner Carroll, Santa Fe and at the New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe Scott Greene’s gorgeous, allegorical, paintings explore the sublime beauty of the human/nature interaction. A master painter as well as an excellent student of art history, Greene endows his paintings with references to the greatest masterworks of narrative and landscape.

In addition to being a stylistic virtuoso, Greene delivers powerful social messages with his paintings. He tackles issues such as climate change and human impact on the environment. He addresses our tendency toward excessive accumulation, and how we can adapt to the new world we have created for ourselves.

Greene’s paintings have been featured in several public exhibitions, including the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art and 516 Arts. It will undoubtedly continue to be acclaimed for its beauty, skill, and its poignant message.

Dallas Art Fair April 14-18, Gala Opening April 14, Dallas, Texas Come see new works by well known artists Turner Carroll has long represented, such as Hung Liu, Drew Tal, Squeak Carnwath, Rusty Scruby, Wanxin Zhang, Kate Petley, Fausto Fernandez, Jamie Brunson, Peter Harrington, John Barker, and Edward Lentsch. Also, we will introduce important contemporary artists we have just begun to represent, such as Karen Yank, Scott Greene, Holly Roberts, Robert Townsend, Orlando Leyba, Suzanne Sbarge, and Willy Bo Richardson.

Book of John: John Barker, Paintings and Toys May 10-31, Opening Friday, May 13, 5:00-7:00, Turner Carroll, Santa Fe The Book of John explores the contraries of Poetic Genius as described by William Blake: Attraction and Repulsion; Love and Hate; Energy and Reason. All are found in the playfully explosive paintings by Santa Fe artist, John Barker.

Barker delves into the seductive energy of human social and psychological activity. To Barker, his paintings are purely representational. He creates an image as he sees it, in the likeness of the person he is painting. He conjures the energetic, emotional current of the person he depicts. He brings to life the paradoxes inherent in each person; the ugly and the beautiful in their essence.

Barker’s social and emotional experiences fuel powerful visual storytelling. His paintings are archetypal, with the expressionistic, scrawled lines surrounding the portraits, representing the inner frenzy of the anima/animus. As art historians like to point out, an artist’s portraits always contain an aspect of the artist’s own image.

Perhaps this is true in Barker’s paintings, but rather than judge the tension created by the psyche’s opposing forces, his works honor the Imagination. For Barker as for Blake, “Prayer is the Study of Art. Praise is the Practice of Art.” (From Blake’s Laocoon).

Holly Roberts and Wanxin Zhang: Reconstruction May 31-June 19, Opening Friday, June 3, 5:00-7:00, at Turner Carroll, Santa Fe Both Holly Roberts and Wanxin Zhang reconstruct reality by repurposing it. Roberts, one of New Mexico’s most influential contemporary artists, photographs nature and our physical world. She doesn’t re-present the imagery she photographs; she constructs entirely new images using magnified areas of texture and form. While her images are undeniably residential in her interior world, they evoke “memory” or “connection” because we recognize something oddly familiar in them. Sometimes an enlarged photograph of tiny strands of hair becomes an enlarged mass of texture; twisted vines become body arteries; body parts are re-combined into a new being. Often, Roberts places elements of nature within the human body, a reminder of our evolution from the natural world. Roberts’ works will be simultaneously exhibited at the New Mexico Museum of Art, through September 11, 2016, as part of Self-Regard: Artist Self-Portraits from the Collection.

Zhang, a Chinese artist, is largely influenced by the terracotta warriors found in Xian, buried with Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. When he first saw the warriors who protected the burial site of the emperor, he was struck by the individuality displayed in every single sculpture. The fact that the artists took such care to give different human attributes to each warrior, lent reverence to their task. Zhang gives each of them symbols indicating contemporary life—spectacles, binoculars, skateboards.

He uses the same techniques with his clay and glazes as the artists did millennia ago, referencing the past while making a statement about contemporary life. Zhang’s works have been shown in museums throughout the United States and Asia.

25th Anniversary Exhibition: Come celebrate

Turner Carroll’s 25th with us, as we feature a selection of our artists, spanning the globe from 1991 until now.

Opening Friday, June 3, 5:00-7:00, at Turner Carroll, Santa Fe

ROY G BIV: Jamie Brunson, Kate Petley, Robert Townsend, Fausto Fernandez June 21-July 10, Opening Friday, June 24, 5:00-7:00, at Turner Carroll, Santa Fe Before there was a written language, color was the universal language of mankind.

Prehistoric humans used color to describe every aspect of their lives. Red= blood; orange= fire; yellow=sun; green=natural vegetation/food source; blue=air; indigo= water; violet=the color of sunset/sunrise transition. Historians believe prehistoric people would travel up to 25 miles to mine iron for pigments to make the red and ochre paints for their cave paintings. Ancient Egyptians valued color symbolism in their tombs and temples so deeply that their desire for additional color options fueled their efforts in mining and trade. We know for certain that the Greek and Roman sculptures we think of as monochromatic white, were originally polychromatic! They had red lips, colored eyes, brilliantly hued garments—all painted with painstakingly created paints from pure pigment. The more rare the pigment, the more exalted the subject.

In 1025, Persian philosopher Avicenna included the use of color as medical treatment in his encyclopedic The Canon of Medicine. Since then, chromotherapy has been used to stimulate various physical and psychological responses. Modern scientific research

suggests that viewing bright colors causes the brain to release the “feel-good hormone” dopamine; while cool blues provoke release of oxytocin, causing feelings of calm.

In the mid 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton discovered that by shining light through a prism, he could separate light into the component colors as in a rainbow. The resulting colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, give us the pithy acronym Roy G. Biv, which has helped multitudes of school children master the visible color spectrum.

The artists in Turner Carroll’s Roy G. Biv exhibition all use color as the visual language of artistic ecstasy. Fernandez, a Mexican artist now living in the U.S., places layer upon layer of color, embellishing his paintings with diamond dust glitter, to magnify and reflect the chromatic effect. Undeniably influenced by the festive use of color in Mexican culture, he collages colorful flowers, draws energetic lines with crayon, and his works emerge as a triumph of colorful beauty. Fernandez’s works were recently featured in the touring museum exhibition Beauty Reigns: Baroque Sensibilities in Contemporary Art. Likewise, Townsend uses explosive color and celebratory themes in his hyper-realistic watercolors. Candy and lollipops, polka dots, and modernist analog clocks, all express the child-like excitement of color. Townsend’s colorful pop works are included in top museum collections such as the Getty Museum and the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation in California.

Brunson and Petley, more pure colorists, use deep hues and bold shapes, to achieve meditative transcendence. Petley’s works have been included in museum exhibitions in the U.S., and she was awarded the prestigious artist residency at Franz Mayer of Munich studio in Germany, last year. Brunson has also received numerous art residencies, and her works are included in the American Embassy in Doha, Qatar, and museums throughout the U.S. These four artists, like artists since the beginning of time, use the universal language of color to communicate directly through our senses, on the most powerful level.

Drew Tal and Karen Yank: Circumspect July 19-August 9, Opening Friday, July 22, 5:00-7:00, at Turner Carroll, Santa Fe Circumspection implies considering your actions carefully before moving forward. Such is the case with both American artist Karen Yank, and Israeli artist, Drew Tal. Yank won a prestigious art award to study at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in New York in 1987. Her teacher was celebrated—if reclusive—New Mexico minimalist artist, Agnes Martin. Yank relocated with her family to New Mexico, continuing her friendship with Agnes Martin for two decades, until Martin’s death in 2004.

Martin often told Yank she was her only “real” student. She passed on her opinions about artistic process and philosophy to Yank. While Martin is well known for her grid drawings and line paintings, Yank sought a different shape. Martin’s horizontal line was reminiscent of the distant New Mexico horizon line, uninterrupted by natural form.

Yank, however, saw the circle as the most perfect shape for her sculpture. From earliest civilization, the circle has represented the life-giving force of the sun, eternity, fertility, divinity. Yank created a large body of work using the circle, often referencing Martin in using the line within her circles, as is evident in Yank’s “Thrice” as well as her “XO” series.

For Drew Tal, circumspection was wrought by his environment. “Growing up in Israel in the ’60s, was a blessing for me. At that time in history the young state was a true melting pot for millions of immigrants from all around the globe. Surrounded with such a colorful collage of ethnicities, languages, nationalities, cultures and religions made me realize from an early age that the world beyond me was a rich and complex place. This revelation opened my eyes to the exotic, and made me extremely curious about people and their religions, customs, costumes and histories.” While Israel has experienced political strife during Tal’s lifetime, he regards each human being as equally sacred, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Turner Carroll will feature some of Tal’s extraordinary, compassionate, images of Muslim women in this exhibition.

Georges Mazilu and Mavis McClure: Morphed August 23-September 13, Opening August 26, 5:00-7:00, at Turner Carroll, Santa Fe Romania during the rule of harsh dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was like living with Dracula in charge. According to Romanian stories, the barbaric, uneducated Ceausescu actually had the blood of young boys transfused into his own body, bringing the Dracula legend eerily to bear. Georges Mazilu grew up in Sibiu—a region of Transylvania— during the rule of Ceausescu. His life was one of shadows and fear, until he escaped Romania and found refuge in France, where he still lives today. His extraordinary skill resulted in his paintings being included in museum collections in Eastern and Western Europe and the United States.

Though Romanian history is dark and oppressive, it possesses an art history that is rich and beautiful. Golden icon paintings and ornate monasteries grace the countryside.

Consequently, artistic training in Romania is highly rigorous, with many years of training. The first few years focus on the human figure; the last years focus on a specific media of choice. After mastering realism, Mazilu “morphed” into an abstract painter.

For several years, his works were purely abstract assemblages, with the final forms somewhat anthropomorphic. Today, Mazilu’s paintings display perfectly blended fusions of abstraction and stunning realism. He combines his magical realist style with the European Old Master palette, creating an exquisite fusion of old world and dream world.

Mavis McClure’s stylized figures of humans and animals draw inspiration from iconic Greek sculpture. Exaggerated scale of hands and feet, morph the human into superhuman. As Greeks idealized beauty, so McClure idealizes the contemporary figure.

Symbol Pleasures: Squeak Carnwath, Walter Robinson, Orlando Leyba October 4-25, Opening October 7, 5:00-7:00, at Turner Carroll, Santa Fe Squeak Carnwath, Walter Robinson, and Orlando Leyba all create abstract works of art that employ highly personalized symbolism. Yet, each of these artists has massive appeal in the art world at large. Their works are included in such impressive collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Art Museum, Carnegie-Mellon University Art Collection, and San Jose Museum of Art. This exhibition at Turner Carroll will be the first time their works have been shown together, though their shared use of symbolic visual communication is undeniable.

Carnwath has become known as a quasi-philosopher of contemporary culture and society. She paints elements of mundane, everyday life, such as grocery lists or scribbled down quotations from the radio news, juxtaposed with remnants from high culture—the Etruscan urn or the candelabra. This exhibition features multi-sensory work from her most recent body of work: the Shuffle series. Carnwath paints a playlist that includes songs that reflect the grit of our lives. From “Crazy” to “Rehab,” “Respect,” and “Take Me to the River,” these songs symbolize the longing, distress, and determination we all share. Via the accompanying iPod that hangs next to the painting and plays the playlist for the viewer as they view it, the symbolism in this painting moves us through not only our visual sense, but also our auditory sense.

Walter Robinson uses socio-political symbolism in his sculpture. His “Promise” serves as a symbol of artistic endeavors. It is a larger than life paintbrush, with the brush made of human hair. The human hair paintbrush bristles symbolize not only the highly per-

sonal nature of revealing oneself by making art, but also the sacrifice, by virtue of giving up adornment/body part for his art. In his “Pencil Box,” Robinson creates 3 foot tall colored pencils as an homage to his mother, who recently passed away. The pencils symbolize different aspects of her existence. They are each different colors, with specific words relating to her life, written on each pencil. Rather than being perfectly the same size and sharpness, each of the pencils is different in some way, as is any aspect of a human being. Robinson places the pencils in the most finely-crafted, felted box, honoring their beauty.

Orlando Leyba’s paintings employ symbols that remind us of images from reality. They seem so familiar, yet it’s hard to put our finger on what they actually represent. Leyba’s symbols are personal and cultural. He describes his work as a “result of overlapping cultures (and) languages.” Leyba grew up in Chimayo, New Mexico, in a household that spoke a different language at every meal of the day. Consequently, Leyba became quite interested in researching his ancestral history. He travelled throughout areas of Spanish influence, such as Morocco and Latin America; the resulting symbolism is apparent in his work. “These influences and experiences are distilled into shape, color, emotion and movement,” he explains. “At times, they are neither solid or fluid; they are ephemeral and rooted in human experiences—well intentioned, cyclical and inherently flawed.”

Certain areas of his paintings remind us of Spanish tile; other areas remind us of mathematical geometry, derived from his math teacher, father. Yet other areas contain fluid, serpentine, diasphoric symbolism, as in his “Vibora.” In the lower left portion of the painting, the black form is unidentifiable, but evokes a symbol of comfort such as a cast iron tea-kettle. Nurturing, cultural symbolism is undeniably compelling to us all.

Igor Melnikov and Edward Lentsch: Expansion Theory November 1-22, Opening November 4, 5:00-7:00, at Turner Carroll, Santa Fe Igor Melnikov’s and Edward Lentsch’s paintings share an ability to speak directly to the human psyche. Melnikov was born in Moscow and spent part of his childhood in Siberia, under Russian Communist governance. Melnikov places the human child in his otherwise minimal paintings, with blessings scrawled in undecipherable Russian on the frames that surround and protect them. Melnikov considers himself a conceptual, rather than a narrative artist. He attempts to present an image we all recognize—the child— one with which we have no negative associations. He considers the child to be the vessel for the human spirit, from which the viewer can taste the essence that binds us all together. To quote art critic Suzanne Deats, “When people weep in the presence of Melnikov’s paintings, it is not from pathos but from recognition of a forgotten part of themselves…They are the archetypal souls that exist intact at the core of each person.”

Edward Lentsch approaches painting in a manner of primordial creation. He mixes earth, raw pigment, and other natural materials to create the atmosphere of the cosmos.

It is possible to explore each of these artists’ works for extended amounts of time. Like the mind enters Melnikov’s paintings through the eyes of the children, the space and texture of Lentsch’s paintings allow the eye to meander in the sublime beauty of one’s inner world.

Both Igor Melnikov and Edward Lentsch have works in outstanding collections throughout the world. Melnikov’s works reside, as well, in several museum collections.