Some uppery-state goings on.

The NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) event this weekend at the Basilica in Hudson, NY.  The exhibit that features the participation of many galleries is being described as a " a site-specific project" and not an art fair.

The event is happening this weekend, Sat & Sun from 11-6pm.  A slate of performances is scheduled on both days, check the NADA website for details and a list of participating galleries.   There are also some "after hour" events happening on Saturday evening including a reception taking place at Club Helsinki.

...And if you happen to be up in that area, the Thompson Giroux Gallery is inaugurating a new space in Chatham, NY with an opening reception for a group show on Saturday, July 30 (4-7pm).  Artists featured in this exhibit are:  Peter Acheson, Rick Birkett, Claude Carone, Dan Devine, Carol Mangan, Melissa Sarris, Arthur Sordillo, Marion Vinot.  The gallery is located at 57 Main St, Chatham, NY 12037.

Meet yer Maykr: Peter Acheson

I wandered on up to Ghent, NY yesterday to make a studio visit with Peter Acheson.  When I arrived, carpenters were putting siding on the building he's had constructed to store his work.  The new building sits next to the small barn in which he paints.   This new building holds 20+ years of resolved work, each section of the racks is ordered according to size, material, or vein of work.  

There are hundreds of completely different exhibits that could be culled from those sorted racks. 

Here are some images from the visit:

 

  

  

  

  

A very early owl totem work.

  

  

  

  

  

a group of small framed works of various vintage

 

  

two spray paint works from the last year or so.

one of Peter's recent vibratory paintings

Remote Viewing: Peter Acheson

Peter Acheson Untitled 2004, oil on board, 8" x 10"Maykr pal Peter Acheson is currently exhibiting a selection of his language paintings at Brick Walk Fine Art in West Hartford, CT through March 14.
Since I won't be able to make it over to West Hartford before the end of the exhibit, I asked gallery director Kevin Rita to kindly email me some photos of the show. I'm sharing a few of them here with you. Because that's just how I am; unselfishly giving.
Most of the works in this show span the period between 2002 and 2005. The exhibit also includes a selection of his framed watercolors. I've focused on the paintings on panel and canvas because they translate better in the photographs. The small, immediate nature of this work is very indicative of one strain of Peter's activity. Based on a rural compound in Ghent NY, Acheson is feverishly prolific, pushing the limits of visual language, and possibly even the limits of taste. His work is enmeshed in an assertive tangle of forms, color and line. They feel like language. Each intimately scaled joint is a stanza of some epic rambling concrete poem. I don't consider the marks in the paintings as pictograms. They're not stand ins for some other significance. I would consider them cryptograms, or better yet cryptoforms; they seem to allude to a secret knowledge, but their meaning is full frontal and endemic. There's nothing to know, just something to face.

Peter speaks to this aspect of marks made openly, directly and not caged in a mantle of metaphorical adornment. "Language is one of the tools we have to describe image....here language is itself on display, without being processed into image, or maybe, the process of forming, like the tuning of the guitars before the performance..."
For me, engagement with Peter's work entails traveling on an arc of acceptance. It's always a process. With almost every new body of Peter's work I've felt at least some level of shock or repulsion as it pokes at some tender spot in my sense of visual decency. Inevitably though, I come around to the work, taking it for what it is, not what I expect it should be. I find the work emphatic in that way. It forces you on a trip you may not expect to take.
Brick Walk Fine Art is located at 322 Park Road, West Hartford, CT (860) 233-1730. Check it out if you get a chance. If you do, let me know what you think. I've posted a copy of the exhibit's press release here.