What is the unique thing that all artists share? What do they search for in their art that defines them? Is it their brush stroke, line, hand on the material, humor, politics or choices in presenting ideas?

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ETHAN COHEN NEW YORK presents Sharper Image , a group exhibition that brings to together 22 artists and the unique expressions. The purpose of this exhibition is to showcase these diverse ideas as each of their practices moves toward some notion of idealism and refinement.

 

Idealism, in its myriad forms, can be serious or playful, abstract or representational, sculptural or painterly, conceptual or nonobjective, active or passive.

 

Idealism in its painterly form, like in the work of Barry Nemett, Kyle Hackett, Chi Ming, Joseph Ayers, Peter Ferguson, Li Lin, June Culp, Laini Nemett, M.Cheon aka Kim Il Soon, Liu Xiaohui or Lillian Lorraine, focuses on specific details, like an architectural step or varying approaches to portraiture. As Barry Nemett says, “Painting, for me, is about bringing subject matter, emotions, ideas into visual focus.

 

Ironically, sometimes sharpening an image involves ambiguity, ethereality . . . even invisibility.” The everyday object finds revision and refinement in the sculptural works of Brookhart Jonquil, Michael Zelehoski, Bob Bailey, Matt Kinney, Breon Dunigan, and Isaac Aden, who employ speakers, street signs, skeletons, fluorescent tubing, and mirrors. In the work of Eric Doeringer, the artist has taken familiar art objects – on Kawara’s date paintings, in this case – and appropriated it as his own. The intangible is given form in the sound/algorithm paintings of John Aslanidis, and Leanna Pascual’s yoga-practice-turned-performance artwork. Likewise, Steve Lambert’s lit sign illuminates, literally, the notion of authoritarianism and power.

 

Sharper Image  artists include Trong G. Nguyen, Breon Dunigan, Eric Doeringer, Leanna Pascual, John Aslanidis, Barry Nemett, Laini Nemett, M. Cheon aka Kim Il Soon, Brookhart Jonquil, Michael Zelehoski, Lillian Lorraine, Peter Ferguson, Steve Lambert, Kyle Hackett, Joseph Ayers, Matt Kinney, Liu Xiaohui, Isaac Aden, Bob Bailey, June Culp, Chi Ming, and Li Lin.

 

Ethan Cohen New York will present Sharper Image: Part II, a special exhibition, at artSTRAND

in Provincetown, Massachusetts from August 9 – 18, 2013.

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Opening Reception: 

 

Thursday, June 27, 6-8pm

Ethan Cohen New York

251 W. 19th St.

New York, NY 10011

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