March 3 - April 8, 2017
Opening Friday, March 3, 2017
MAIN GALLERY | RICHARD VAN DER AA - pictures of paintings
WAITING ROOM | JOSHUA HUYSER - Shivelight
PROJECT SPACE | SKY GLABUSH - Surfacing
BACK ROOM | NOËL MORICAL - Friendly Ghosts
NEW YORK – 57W57ARTS is pleased to announce four concurrent exhibitions featuring the paintings of Richard van der Aa, the watercolors of Joshua Huyser, Sky Glabush’s woven paintings and Noël Morical’s hanging sculptures. On view from March 3rd through April 8th, there will be an opening reception for the artists on Friday, March 3rd, from 6-9pm.
In the Main Gallery, Richard van der Aa will present pictures of paintings, a suite of consonant, reductive works that examine the point of tension between painting and sculpture, object and image. In describing van der Aa’s work as a “metalanguage of painting with which to ponder its own object,” artist Daniel G. Hill writes, “We find ourselves at the margin between the pictorial and the concrete, questioning our comfort with distinctions and categories that enable us to make sense of the world, not with unease but with the pleasure of wonder.” (Margins of Tolerance, essay, Oct. 2016).
Richard van der Aa lives and works in Paris, France. He was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1963. After studying painting at the University of Canterbury and graduating in 1985, he moved to Sydney, Australia. From 1998 to 2004 van der Aa was Faculty Head of Visual Arts at the School of Creative Arts, Oxford Falls, Sydney, and he completed a Master of Fine Arts at COFA (University of NSW) in 2004. In 2005 van der Aa moved to Paris, France. In 2009, he and his wife Anna established the ParisCONCRET association for the dissemination of reductive abstract art. Van der Aa presented his first solo exhibition at the C.S.A. Gallery in Christchurch in 1985. His work has since been exhibited extensively in Australia and New Zealand, and in recent years, in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Poland, the UK and the USA.
In the Waiting Room, Minnesota-based artist Joshua Huyser will present Shivelight, a selection of watercolors depicting singular household objects, such as a drinking glass, a set of measuring cups, or a child’s play toy. Huyser’s astute contemplation of these items, centrally composed and rendered in dreamily matter-of-fact brushstrokes, bestows on them a distinct reverence and ethereality that is all too often overlooked in our everyday experience.
Joshua Huyser was born and raised in Montana. He received his M.F.A. at the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History in Iowa City, Iowa in 2001. He has taught at the University of Northern Iowa and Montana State University. In 2002 he was a guest professor and lecturer at the Herzen Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia working with both American and Russian art students. After moving to Minneapolis in 2005 he began working in the commercial film industry while continuing to exhibit nationally. A 2016 McKnight Fellowship finalist, Huyser actively exhibits, most recently in Milan, London, and Marseille and has work in both public and private collections nationally and internationally.
In the Project Space, Sky Glabush will present Surfacing, an exhibition of three recent woven paintings comprised of cotton, wool and acrylic paint. The artist’s interest in weaving began as an investigation into the support of painting, where he explored ways to create his own material instead of simply accepting canvas or linen as the default painting surface. Glabush’s work examines the connections within modernist painting to both the large ideas of space and time, as well as the smaller connections to everyday textiles such as tablecloths and blankets.
Born in 1970 in Alert Bay, British Columbia, Sky Glabush lives and works in London, Ontario, Canada where he teaches studio art at Western University. Recent exhibitions include "The New Garden" at MKG127 in Toronto; "The Window is also a Door" at Prosjektrom Normanns, Stavanger Norway; "What is a Self?” at Oakville Galleries; and "The Painting Project" at Galerie de l'UQUAM, Montreal. Glabush's work is in many public collections including the Canada Council Art Bank, McIntosh Gallery, Museum London, Mackenzie Art Gallery, Mendel Art Gallery, The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, McCarthy Tetrault, and the Bank of Montreal.
In the gallery’s Back Room, Noël Morical’s suspended sculptures employ the age old knotting technique of macramé to explore tension, endurance, and self-reliant form language, transmuting the technique beyond its domestic and practical 1960’s reincarnation. A vibrant color palette of paracord and an intuitive playfulness lend the work its charm and curiously inviting nature.
Noël Morical (American, b. 1989) lives and works between Chicago, IL and Kansas City, MO. She received her B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. Her recent solo exhibition “High Swoon” was presented at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago and at the Fiberspace Gallery, Stockholm. Group and two-person exhibitions include Weinburg-Newton Gallery, Chicago; 99¢ Plus Gallery, Brooklyn; Athen B. Gallery, Oakland, CA; SLOW, Chicago; and LVL3, Chicago.