Ten Years

            Celebrating its Tenth Anniversary, Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to open a group show on January 6th, 10 Years, that honors and celebrates the artists that have helped shape the gallery’s past, and who will help move the gallery well into the next successful decade. It is a combination of all these artists who have helped  place the gallery in a vital role in the broader conversations of contemporary art. We are thrilled and humbled to be able to continue to provide this platform for our artists.

            With a strong focus on painting, the artists of the past decade have brought extreme realism, surreal expression, abstraction, landscapes and still-lifes into the space. Tony Curanaj’s extreme realism paintings, remind us of the importance of honoring the tradition of painting itself, with each work painted from real life scenes from his studio. Tiffany Bozic and Alfred Steiner, also skillfully create work that combines painted elements from our world, to create new surreal compositions: Bozic focusing on the natural world, while Steiner draws our attention to contemporary culture. Riusuke Fukahori’s footprint with the gallery has established him as a fine artist, whose perfected technique of 3D paintings of goldfish have made him one of the gallery’s most sought after artists. He will have two new small works for this exhibition. This year we were thrilled to be able to show the work of Matt Hansel, whose subjects and compositions draw our attention to art history as a whole, and how we bring our own knowledge to the canvas, as he combine traditional Flemish imagery with digital manipulations and pop elements.

            Artists Geoff McFetridge, Aaron Johnson, and Parra will all contribute new expressive figurative works for the show, while balancing out new abstractions with a small collection of geometric works from Johnny Abrahams, and Serena Mitnik-Miller. Sam Friedman’s exquisite new piece, resembles the crack of a volcanic cave, which moves the dialogue closer to his previous landscape work. Evan Hecox’s ever evolving practice, leaves us with recreations of his memories of travels, the most recent work for this show pulls from his trip through the southwest, highlighting the muted palette of this geographic area. More familiar to abstraction, Pema Rinzin’s works on paper, made from pure mineral pigments, combine elements of a forest we may recognize from a childhood dream, while Andrew Schoultz’s ‘landscapes’ show us a world of power and strength, combining his usual visual lexicon of symbols of power in history.

            Assemblage and found objects continue to manifest itself in the program through artists David Ellis, Kris Kuksi, Robert Larson, and Wayne White. Ellis’ Recollection work for this show is a collection of records meticulously combined to create a beautiful and pristine gradient, while Kuksi offers us one of his unique assemblages with A Neo-Minoan Landscape built with found objects, put together through painstaking process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Wayne White’s popular word paintings all begin with finding a vintage commercially printed lithograph, to carry his criticism and wit. While lastly, Robert Larson’s Red Honey is a composition of discarded cigarette packages, he’s found and collected in order to make this abstracted floral composition.

            Finally, the last three artists of the show, Hilary Pecis, Andy Dixon, and Libby Black will present still-life works, two paintings, and sculpture. Both Pecis and Dixon pull from the Western tradition of the still-life painting, Dixon’s vibrant vanitas, showcasing the successes of a recent hunt, while Pecis’ painted still-life focuses her brush work on the reflections of the bottles, perhaps reserved for the feast. Finally, Libby Black’s still-life composition, Some Women, is a handmade recreation of luxury goods, and personal ephemera. Constructed through paper and glue, each hand painted element contributes to her 3D still-life sculpture.

            10 Years will feature 21 artists: Aaron Johnson, Alfred Steiner, Andrew Schoultz, Andy Dixon, David Ellis, Evan Hecox, Geoff McFetridge, Hilary Pecis, Johnny Abrahams, Kris Kuksi, Libby Black, Matt Hansel, Parra, Pema Rinzin, Riusuke Fukahori, Robert Larson, Sam Friedman, Serena Mitnik-Miller, Tiffany Bozic, Tony Curanaj, and Wayne White.