March 15 - April 17, 2026
Joel Werring - Intervals | Gwenn Thomas - AB: 51 | Royce Howes - New Works on Newspaper | Roberto Rizzo - De pictura | Chris Rucker
CLOSING RECEPTION, FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2026, 2:30-6:30pm
WAITING ROOM
Joel Werring - Intervals
Intervals brings together monotypes and sculptures developed through repetition and variation within a distilled visual vocabulary. Working in black and white and at a consistent scale, each print emerges through pressure and transfer, allowing shapes to shift subtly from one work to the next. Meaning arises through relation rather than any single image. The fragmentary forms suggest an architectural language without fixed symbolism. Extending into space, the sculptures emphasize balance, proportion, and physical weight. Together, the works unfold through intervals, where perception opens over time.
Joel Werring is an artist working across painting, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking. He received his BA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley, and his MFA from the Yale School of Art. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Painting, and his work has been widely exhibited. He is an associate professor of Fine Arts at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. He lives and works in Redding, Connecticut.
MELANIE’S OFFICE
Gwenn Thomas - AB: 51
Gwenn Thomas' work exists in a space between sculpture, painting, photography and architecture. Her object sculptures of awnings, windows, doorways and rooms --exterior and interior architectural spaces -- initiate a back and forth between looking out and looking in. Her most recent series of works are part urban landscape, part abstraction and part found object.
AB: 51 and Story of a Shadow are pigment prints on canvas from the early-mid 2000s. As Lilly Wei has said, these pieces are part of Thomas' continued exploration into "the oscillating, inconclusive relationship between original and copy, what is present, what is not."
Also included: Rare Earth Magnet 2022, neodymium cast glass in brass encasement.
Recent solo shows: Exile Gallery, Vienna; Art Projects International, NY; Exile Gallery, Berlin; Mélange; ung-5, Cologne; Southfirst, Brooklyn, NY; Regina Rex, NY; 57W57Arts, NY; Point of Contact Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY.
Recent two-person and group shows: MIART, Milan, Italy; Bennysvide0, Brooklyn, NY; Parent Company, NY; 57W57ARTS, NY; Gwenn Thomas & Monica Forrestall, Kerry Schuss Gallery, NY; Wishing Well, Figura Avulsa, Lisbon, Portugal; Unbound: Performance as Rupture, Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin, Germany; Facts of Light, Cathouse Proper, Brooklyn, NY; DUST: The Plates of the Present', Centre Pompidou, Paris; Gwenn Thomas + Jason Murphy, Abattoir Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio; Social Photography IX, Carriage Trade, NY; ‘Re-visions’, Pinakothek Der Modern, Munich, Germany
Selected collections include: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA; Graphic Arts Collection, Firestone Library, Princeton University, NJ; Progressive Art Collection, Mayfield, OH; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington, Kentucky; São Schlumberger, Paris, France; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, Germany; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal; 'Plates of the Present' Collection, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France. A survey of Thomas' work was published by Charta (Milan, Italy).
AL’S OFFICE
Royce Howes - New Works on Newspaper
In my recent work, the newspaper page, a familiar quotidian object with specific physical characteristics and qualities, is combined with oil paint. When oil paint is applied to newspaper, it fuses with the newsprint and both obscures and reveals texts and photographic images to create a new object, a new image.
Royce Howes received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Tyler School of Art. He also attended the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. Howes first exhibited in New York in 1982 at the Charles Cowles Gallery. In 1986, his work was included in the Grace Borgenicht Gallery Invitational Exhibition and in 1987, William S. Lieberman purchased a painting by Howes for the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That same year Werner H. Kramarsky purchased a work on paper, later donated to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Howes’ work was represented by Grace Borgenicht Gallery until the gallery closed in 1995. Royce Howes’ newspaper photo collages were included in Selections, Winter 2001 at The Drawing Center in New York City. He has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and has received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Individual Artist Grant.
AL’S OFFICE
Roberto Rizzo - De pictura
I am a painter. The space of my painting is physically relative, but ideally absolute.
The internal space of my paintings is conventionally absolute, that is, autonomous and independent from both a perceptual and conceptual point of view, and at the same time physically relative to everything around it. Therefore, it is the absolute that lies within the relative and not vice versa.
Starting from Lucio Fontana's cut as a structural element acquired by the space of contemporary painting, I reconstruct that long experience of deconstruction processes of the twentieth century avant-gardes.
Reconstructing deconstruction. Not a return to order, but an elaboration that contains that memory without removing it.
A phrase by Picasso comes to mind: "Painting is a blind man’s profession." He was well aware that the image in painting is the least of the problems. What is important is all that comes before: the image is the consequence of a process. The painting process, the elaboration, the stratification, the construction and destruction of forms. It is the consequence of the struggle, even in a positive sense, with the space, with the painting. A process of appropriation, of cognition. The image arrives at the end, almost unconsciously.
Awareness of my analytical presumtions that define the surface of my paintings allows me to liberate the process of painting reconstruction. In my paintings there are always two forms, that are a synthesis of the history of painting, figures and objects on the background. Their color, their essence, changes when they cross the void which cuts the surface of the painting.
Roberto Rizzo (1967) lives and works in Milan, Italy. Among the main solo exhibitions, Roberto Rizzo - Paintings in Milan in 2002, Painting the Present in London in 2005 and in Milan in 2006, Roberto Rizzo in Viterbo in 2007, Meridiani e paralleli in Milan in 2016, De posizione in Milan in 2020, Bête comme un peintre in Milan in 2023. His paintings have been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions in Europe in Trieste, Dublin, Paris, Milan, Venice, Mantua, Turin, Rome, London, Rotterdam, Todi, Viterbo, Athens, Belfast. He exhibits his work for the first time in New York at 57W57Arts. His work is in the collections of the Benaki Museum in Athens and the MO.C.A. – Montecatini Contemporary Art Museum in Montecatini Terme. Essays on his work were written by Giovanni Maria Accame, Angela Madesani and Barry Schwabsky, among the others. Texts by him were published in several art books and catalogues including Parola d’artista. Dall’esperienza aniconica: scritti di artisti italiani 1960-2006 edited by Giovanni Maria Accame, 2007. He teaches at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, where he graduated in 1989.
SHELF
Chris Rucker
Chris Rucker, a New York-based artist and designer since 1996, has developed a distinctive approach to furniture design that aligns with postmodern critiques of authenticity and materiality. His work prominently features materials such as Oriented Strand Board (OSB) and moving blankets—substances typically used as substitutes for more traditional or "authentic" materials. By repurposing these industrial materials, Rucker challenges conventional distinctions between the genuine and the simulated, a concept central to postmodern discourse.
This approach resonates with Neville Wakefield's examination of postmodernism, where he delves into themes of authenticity, imitation, and the blurred boundaries between reality and representation. Wakefield discusses how postmodernism questions traditional notions of the "real" by incorporating elements that challenge authenticity and originality. Rucker's utilization of materials like OSB—a manufactured wood product designed to replace solid lumber—embodies this postmodern challenge. His designs prompt viewers to reconsider preconceived notions of value and authenticity in design, reflecting the postmodern tendency to deconstruct and reinterpret established norms.
Rucker's work also aligns with the practices of artists like Scott Burton and Donald Judd, who explored the intersection of art and functional design. Scott Burton created furniture-sculptures that blurred the lines between utility and art, emphasizing the aesthetic potential of everyday objects. Donald Judd, a key figure in minimalism, designed furniture that adhered to his principles of simplicity and clarity, often using industrial materials to create pieces that were both functional and sculptural. While Judd maintained a distinction between his art and design work, his furniture designs reflect a similar interest in materiality and form.
In 1999, Rucker's career trajectory took a significant turn when he was contracted to repair photographer Steven Klein's studio. This encounter not only expanded his professional network but also influenced his artistic practice. The experience of working closely with Klein, a prominent figure in the art and fashion industries, provided Rucker with unique insights into the interplay between space, function, and aesthetics, further informing his design philosophy. Rucker's collaboration with Klein extended to designing furniture and assisting with remodeling projects, such as Klein's Bridgehampton compound, where Rucker's creations complemented the eclectic interior.
###
For press inquiries, please contact Sue Ravitz: info@57w57arts.com