The Washington Glass School

>At its inaugural exhibition at SCOPE Basel 2010, Micaëla Gallery (USA) introduces: Marvin Lipofsky, Nicole Schmoelzer, Prema Murthy, Lorraine Peltz, Scott Kildall, Silvia Levenson and Tim Tate.

San Francisco’s Micaëla Gallery will feature contemporary fine art with an exhibition of digital drawings (Murthy), explorations of light (Lipofsky, Schmoelzer), and dialogue addressing social concerns (Levenson, Tate, Kildall, Peltz), Micaela Gallery introduces artworks by gallery artists that are as beautiful to regard as they are engaging to the intellect.

Each artist was carefully chosen because of singular contributions to contemporary visual dialogues.

Lipofsky, L’viv Group No. 2, 2001-2002

Marvin Lipofsky, educator, inveterate traveler, multi-awarded artist, respected sculptor, and passionate supporter of the arts, is credited with bridging international communities of artists through ideological barriers, over time and across continents to become a fundamental pillar of the international glass community. Working with established and respected artists from the Czech Republic, Venice, China and the United States, his collaborative sculptures can be found in important museum and private collections worldwide. A master colorist, Lipofsky’s work pays homage to the communities where he created his work. For example, during his visit to the Czech Republic, his sculpture referenced landscape and political climate, while the work he made during his visit to China used colors that traditionally augur joy and prosperity in Chinese communities. Lipofsky’s work also addresses the manner that light shifts through space as well as the effect on space that his work occupies, in terms of color and texture. He established the respected glass programs at the University of California at Berkeley and the California College of Art; and resides in Berkeley, California.

Schmoelzer, Staining 1109-132, 2010

Nicole Schmoelzer, a life-long student of painting, works with oil paint on linen and paper, developing series of paintings where the behavior of color is the topic. She is an abstract painter, who loves the interaction of colors, with and against each other. By investigating the manner that color performs on a surface or structuring quality, Schmoelzer is excited by the possibilities of illustrating simultaneously different layers of movements and shifts on the visual plane. Her work begins by setting stains – staining – the surface, with liquid oil paint. By building layers, which are subsequently exposed, newly exposed washes of paint take on an illusion of depth, receding to, or surfacing from, an in-between imaginary third-dimensional space. Schmoelzer’s current work incorporates ink with oil paint, and, by process and composition, mediates between the organic and geometric, in expression and approach. She resides in Brooklyn, New York and Basel, Switzerland.

Murthy, Tectonics 06D, 2009

Prema Murthy is a mathematician who decided the best way to address her love of beautiful mathematical theory is to work with it visually. TECTONICS is a series of archival digital prints that explore ruptures in the structural features of globalization. Murthy’s starting points for the project are scientific mapping of natural phenomena and concepts in eastern philosophy relating to embodiment, cognition, and Mind. Between these geographical and cognitive sites, she uses the human body as a metaphor where effects of globalization manifest in terms of simultaneous disintegration and reintegration. She combines drawing techniques with digital processes to map the body in terms of dynamic states of power – continuously shifting spheres of influence that effect geographical, as well as political, economic, and mental terrain as well. In her work, bodies become a drawing tool to map unseen traces of energy, motion and the passage of time. Based in New York, Murthy received her MFA from Goldsmiths College, London.

Peltz. Chandelier Black Gold, 2010

Lorraine Peltz‘ work is a continuing discussion of feminine ideas in a fresh, beautiful manner in relation to place and identity. Her vernacular uses recognizable, highly charged images that explore women’s fantasies and desires. Peltz’ mimicry and reconciliation of how information comes to us and how meaning is made — real life alongside memory, poetry next to prose — become the landscapes of her exterior world and an interior space of dream, desire, hope, and memory. Images of chandeliers, among others, co-mingle the language of 17th century-esque still-life objects and pop imageries of lightening bolts, puffy clouds, painted lips, ominous blackbirds, and more. Peltz received her MFA from the University of Chicago. She lives and works in Chicago and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Kildall. Future Memories, 2006

Scott Kildall works at the intersection of media culture and human memory. His artwork depicts collapse: between producer and consumer, viewer and viewed and simulated and real. He appropriates material, bends rules of consent, restages events and invites viewers to alter his exhibited pieces. These acts and products reflect a shift in cultural production – where ownership dips into a zone of ambiguity and image and sound is widely recycled. Lately, Kildall has been using Second Life – an online world with simulated physical space – as a site for artistic inquiry. A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute MFA program, Kildall resides in San Francisco and New York City.

Levenson. Alta, 2008

Silvia Levenson addresses life and femininity with wry wit and beautiful work. Her work addresses daily living and the veiled anguish within the home, offering viewers a dark and comic window of not so blissful family life. Socially concerned with the influences of modern self medication, as a method of coping with what she calls the cocoon and the battlefield: a place of love, hate, and tension; her work displays dualities of fragility and imperviousness – best conveyed through her mediums of glass and video. Levenson purposefully exploits her personal experiences as wife, mother, daughter, and sister to express the fragility and complexity of her oeuvres. Much of Levenson’s art is an attempt to resolve the difficulties of living with threats of violence, political and domestic, that are out of our control. Born in Argentina, Levenson now resides in Italy.

Tate. My Heart is Unbreakable, 2010

Tim Tate is an artist with a rare appreciation for the beauty of life – he perceives his sculptures as self-contained video installations. Blending a traditional craft with new media technology gives him the framework in which to fit his artistic narrative. Revelation, and in some cases self-revelation, is the underlying theme of his electronic reliquaries. Tate understands his interactive works may disturb because it prompts a variety of responses: amusement, memory, and maybe, recognition. But he values the viewer’s response to his hybrid art work and its conceptual nature. Tate defines his work as phylacteries of sorts, the transparent reliquaries in which bits of saints’ bones or hair, relics, are displayed. In many cultures and religions, relics are believed to have magical or spiritual powers, especially for healing. Tate’s relics are temporal, sounds and moving images formally enshrined, encapsulating experiences like as a collection of cultural specimens. Tate works and lives in Washington DC.

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