“MY FUNNY VALENTINE” A Tribute to Chet Baker
February 1st - 15th, 2010, opening Thursday, February 4th, 2010 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Like the moth unceasingly propelled towards the light, oblivious to its death…
Like the burning spark, longing to be reunited with water…
Sweet Comic Valentine
You Make Me Smile With My Heart
You’re Looks Are Laughable,
Un-photographable
Yet You’re My Favorite Work Of Art
Is Your Figure-Less Than Greek
Is Your Mouth A Little Weak
When You Open It To Speak
Are You Smart
Don’t Change A Hair For Me
Not If You Care For Me
Stay Little Valentine Stay
Each Day Is Valentine’s Day—
— My Funny Valentine, Chet Baker
Tchera Niyego brings together Ayşe Küçük, Ilsabé von Dallwitz, Carl Andre, Jennifer Contini Enderby, Michelle Sakhai, Robert LeBiez and Rudi Keimel in this very special show which explores the alternately political, passionate, melancoly, and spiritual means by which life is experienced and observed. The exhibition employs each artist’s own idiosyncratic fluency in multifarious forms of discourse from painting, and sculpture, to digital work, collage and impressionism. Through each of the poetic works, My Funny Valentine consciously conceals the borders between art and life, fiction and reality, and private and public.
Featuring legendary American Minimalist Carl Andre, My Funny Valentine utilizes the notoriety of Andres personal relationships (including that of his wife, artist Ana Mendieta) to form a layered conceptual show. From love gained, desired, to lost, Tchera Niygeo forms a dialogue that speaks to every viewer.
Captivated and inspired by Chet Baker’s tale of love and passion, Tchera Niyego is most agile at recreating the beauty of Baker’s blues in this powerful show. From the soft and gentle curves of Ilsabé von Dallwitz, to Rudi Keimel’s imagery of the horizon and landscape rendered in muted orange, yellow ochre, deep purple, My Funny Valentine brings to mind the sun burning the last bit of its energy before disappearing into the nightfall. A dexterous sculpture and colorist, Robert LeBiez invites viewers to rejoice with him in his contemplative and poignant rendition of the human body in its bare state.
A new breed of collage, painting and sculpture Jennifer Contini Enderby’s work invites viewers to a world full of vibrant colors and mysterious visages. Enderby gracefully incorporates picturesque elements into the collages she creates—works that stand for a reality observed through her own eyes, imagination and wedding dress. The result is a representation that is dreamy, capricious, and out of this world. Ayşe Küçük’s atmospheric palette captures the mood perfectly. Her art teaches the viewer that pure art springs from a meditative state of mind. Expressive and fantastical, the innovative imagery of this multifaceted artist reveals the hidden side of her subjects’ personalities.
Many of the works in My Funny Valentine have a delirious, hallucinatory air, as if the artists are attempting to transcend both the clinical environment of the gallery space, and the usual expectations of the art world.
Andrea Padovani
February 1st - 15th, 2010, opening Thursday, February 4th, 2010 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Known for his technical brilliant and startling use of light and color, Andrea Padovani incorporates a plethora of references from literature, and mythology, to landscape and personal relationships. His works form a mixed media investigation concerning the multiplicity of marginal spaces, states, emotions and spaces that exist within the emotional landscape. Padovani’s works, allude to a space-between, a place of ambiguity and transition, a site of passage in which borders, boundaries and thresholds are crossed. It is an indeterminate zone of interactions and exchange between Padovani and the viewer. Padovani, whose diverse artistic practice engages with the concept of love and liminality and their relationship to our global landscape, utilizes the strength and subtleties of paint in order to create an art based on light and movement that in turn explores color, luminosity, and sculptural space—through movement and composition.
Conceiving his visual art on the canvas surface, Padovani conveys inventive points of view that form a synthesis between abstract and figurative elements. Padovani creates a narrative with light, utilizing abstract compositions that reveal a life within the clinical world of painting. His works deliver compelling patterns with graceful colors, methodical lines and arches, an aesthetic that can be closely identified with a deep spirituality. Working toward being an impulse to change, with creative energy, and inspiration, he brings his knowledge of painting, sculpture and the arts to every piece. At its core his art is an experiment of movement, light, contemplation and ritual, each perfectly composed in order to touch the viewer on a more profound level.
