Broadway Gallery NYC

Obscure Narratives
Igor Zaytsev
Recessive Traits: In the Absence of the Dominant Element

Obscure Narratives

Obscure Narratives
December 1st - 15th, 2009, opening Thursday, December 3rd, 6 to 8pm.

Curated by Christine Kennedy

Featuring Carlos Aquilino, Claudia Emanuela Coppola, Gulselin Cagiroglu, Piero Golia, KAWS, Keanne van de Kreeke, Sean Landers, and Viggo Salting.

Obscure Narratives investigates the concept of personal ritual as explored by the place of the individual within society. The aim is to encourage empathy, allowing the viewer to consider his or her own musings and create a time of reflection. This aspect of the exhibition presents a possible point of transference for intellectual and emotive concerns to develop between the relationship of the work and the observer of the work. Obscure Narratives offers a time to consider the ramifications of personal history within the broader context of self, society, and the other

Igor Zaytsev

Igor Zaytsev
December 1st - 15th, 2009, receptions Thursday, October 22nd, 6 to 8pm and Thursday, December 3rd, 6 to 8pm.

Igor Zaytsev’s paintings have the swirling energy of many great classical painters, they also suggest something quite different: the murmuring of numerous voices beneath each layer. The artist’s work has changed greatly over the years, and is seldom truly traditional. He courageously goes beyond the given and familiar, pioneering new techniques and materials in order to expand his own vision. Heavy, multi-layered surfaces and mixed media prevail in his earlier works, where pigmented layers exaggerate brushwork creating an exaggerated physicality.

In paintings such as Refraction3 Appearance, the works look like scratchings on an old, stained plaster wall. Rather than being tough and raw, the effect is delicate. In contrast, recent pictures are the most liberated the artist has ever done. Zaytsev’ epic conceptions marry together the context and knowledge of years of work with explosions of lush color that evoke the spatial atmospherics of 19th-century landscape painting, and renaissance grandeur. Their illusionism is tempered by viscous paint, applied in subtle, rapid brushstrokes and lustrous pools.

In the case of Blue Crystal, it is a shock of aquamarine blue and antique white with flecks of chartreuse that dominate the painting’s side. The composition suggests an avenging presence hurtling toward slates of midnight blue, which culminates in an apocalyptic void at the painting’s center. The arrangement suggests an artist who has always blended a proclivity for visual drama with a keen interest in the physicality of paint.

Recent works, specifically Sketch for reflections and Mystery , reference the cosmological phenomenon of dark energy—a hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to increase the expansion of the universe. These layered “universescapes” express a creative force within—and beyond—the physical constraints of the canvas, where each ripple and crack acts as an internal explosion.

Working with layers of paints and interacting glazes, the paintings often use gravity as the force for directing the movement of the paint on the surface. Zaytsev’s ambition for painting as a carrier of meanings that are accessible to all is evidence of his own immersion in the culture of painting and its potential for transformation.

Recessive Traits—In the Absence of the Dominant Element

Recessive Traits—In the Absence of the Dominant Element
November 2nd to December 15th, 2009, receptions: Thursday, November 5th and Thursday, December 3rd, 2009, 6 - 8 pm.

A Best of New York Project by Broadway Gallery, Recessive Traits exhibits photographs that lack information derived from facial expressions—the dominant element that delivers the most direct message in a photograph. In the absence of this dominant element, the photograph’s recessive traits are unmasked and deeper meanings emerge. The selected photographs involve a range of subjects, from figurative images, to urban landscape, to still‐life objects. They are united in demanding that the viewers abandon traditional modes of interpretation to derive their meaning. The group show contains two parts. Each part features the works of 10‐12 artists. The artists include both award‐winning and emerging photographers. In part I, we present the works of Heungman, Ivy Finkelstein, Christina Kerns, Katie Humphries, Lexi Adams, William Knipscher, Magda Biernat, Gabriela Herman, Jessica Bruah and Kelly Shimoda. In part II, we present the works of Carl Wooley, Natalie Chan, Rachel Barrett, Katherine Finkelstein, Savannah Sakry, Nat Ward, Marten Elder, Ahndraya Parlato, Sigurjon Guojonsson and Kotaro Okada.