Dive In
May 23 - October 6, 2016

Dive In

Our Summer exhibit,  Dive In plunges into the Summer Season with underwater swimmers, poolside scenes, and water and beach-inspired artwork.  Featured artists are: Hawaii artist, Carol Bennett, Hyperrealist, Matt Story,  Minimalist, Jeffrey Palladini, Marfa artist, Martha Hughes and Mixed Media artist, Mark Van Wagner.

The exhibit will open on May 26 and run through October 6.

  The exhibit will debut the "Scene - Pool Series" by Martha Hughes.

While each artwork communicates a playful summer feel, there is deeper meaning and significance for each of our artists.  Each has a different relationship and significance for focusing on water and the surrounding areas. For Story, water serves as a metaphor for “a deeper self-birth, cleansing and baptism.”   Bennett uses water as a meditative journey through space and life.    Her fascination with the swimmer imagery began when she was living in Los Angeles and swimming at the LA Athletic Club. According to Bennett, “The floor beneath the pool, with its ethereal skylight, was an underwater observation room...used by Olympic coaches in the 1920's. I would feel like a voyeur, watching the swimmer's private time and drawing in their beauty. I became the swimmer I observed in the images I later created.

For Van Wagner, the use of sand -- collected from around the world – represents the impermanence of people and place. 

 

The Water and Swimming pools in the artwork by Palladini symbolize both calm, as well as a deep sensuality and intimacy.    According to Palladini, “In addition to reflecting the work of influences like David Hockney and Eric Fischl, these works also originate from my youth in Southern California, and have come to symbolize for me not only the calm normally associated with water, but also a deep sensuality and intimacy.”

Palladini is also using the water in his new series of work – combining painting and video --  to focus on the duality between stillness and motion, the passive and the active, and the tension created between the two.  The painted figures in the foregrounds physically occupy our tangible world, but are inert, motionless while the world and water in this case, moves on without them.  They are passive in the truest sense, helpless or unwilling to effect events unspooling around them.

We will be debuting a new Pool series by Martha Hughes.   The colors and shapes are intended to welcome and invite the viewer to jump in and become immersed in this vibrant world.  According to Hughes, “Paintings in the Scenes series are of everyday, prosaic interiors and landscapes, with ambiguous, vertiginous spaces that reflect my sense of never being quite at home in the world. The look of this series was initially partly influenced by children’s tempera paintings – colorful, flat and simple.  I often find inspiration from glossy interior design and architecture magazines, with their carefully staged photographs of impossibly pristine, beautiful houses, gardens, and pools.”

We will be hosting a closing reception on Thursday, October 6 from 6-8pm.

What: Dive In

Artists: Kaua’i artist Carol Bennett, Marfa artist, Martha Hughes, New Orleans Hyperrealist Matt Story, San Francisco Minimalist, Jeffrey Palladini and Mixed Media artist, Mark Van Wagner. 

When: May 26 - October 6 (by appointment only in August)

Closing Reception: Thursday, October 6 from 6-8pm

Where: Elisa Contemporary Art, 5622 Mosholu Avenue, Riverdale NY

Hours: Thursday 12 pm – 5 pm and by appointment


Press Release
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