HERE IS A SNEAK PEEK OF ELIZABETH GILFILEN’S SHOW NIGHTCRAWLER

Beth Gilfilen’s show Nightcrawler opens Friday, March 4, 2016, 7–9 p.m.
 The location is Majestic Theatre, 222 Montgomery Street
, Jersey City, NJ.

Willow Would, 2015, oil on canvas, 70 x 64 in. Photo credit: Bill Orcutt. Courtesy of artist.

Front of the Back, 2015, oil on canvas, 76 x 65.5 in. Photo credit: Bill Orcutt. Courtesy of artist.

Backside, 2015, oil on canvas, 76 x 70 in. Photo credit: Bill Orcutt. Courtesy of artist.

Recast, 2015, oil on canvas, 70 x 64 in. Photo credit: Bill Orcutt. Courtesy of artist.

Beth Gilfilen at Majestic Theatre

Beth Gilfilen at Majestic Theatre

Directions from Lower Manhattan to the Majestic Theatre.

 

Directions from Brooklyn to the Majestic Theatre.

Elizabeth Gilfilen: Nightcrawler

SILVERMAN AND MAJESTIC THEATRE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION present

Elizabeth Gilfilen: Nightcrawler

Opening Reception: March 4, 2016, 7–9 p.m.


The Majestic Theatre Condominiums

222 Montgomery Street

Jersey City, NJ 07302

201.435.8000

Exhibition on view in the lobby from March 4, 2016 — June 30, 2016

Curated by Brendan Carroll, brendanscottcarroll.com

Nightcrawler, 2015, oil on canvas, 34 x 25 inches. Photo credit: Bill Orcutt. Courtesy of artist.

SILVERMAN AND MAJESTIC THEATRE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION presents “Beth Gilfilen: Nightcrawler,” curated by Brendan Carroll. This exhibition features a selection of 10 abstract paintings completed in late 2015 and early 2106. Each painting is oil on stretched canvas or linen. Gilfilen’s paintings are built through layers and layers of dynamic brushwork, the wiping away of paint, antagonistic color play, and spatial complexity. Intuition, spontaneity, and improvisation inform her work as much as formal considerations. The results invigorate.

Gilfilen’s dynamic compositions with no fixed viewpoint are animated. The paint roils and seethes across the surface in seemingly perpetual motion. Within the picture plane, intersecting lines and conflicting colors create an undeniable energy. These paintings appear as a conflagration, a dustup, and an apparition. The eye rarely has a place to rest. Within the melee, a form may emerge: an insect, bones, or a tree.

Gilfilen does not approach a blank canvas with a preconceived notion. She has an open mind and lets the painting tell her what it needs next. “I don’t really have any strategy,” she says. ‘[Painting] is very intuitive and changes the moment I begin. I don’t like formulas, and I want the painting to take whatever route it needs to take.” The subject and object of her work is the search to discover elusive forms in the act of painting. Resolution is not a forgone conclusion. Form is not always discovered. The journey, not the destination, is the key.

Although her paintings give the impression they were created during an uninterrupted burst of activity, they more often than not develop in time, in deliberate increments. Her paintings begin with drawing. Accumulated marks grow and deviate. Sometimes when she sees a recognizable form emerge, she negates it. Part of Gilfilen’s process is to sit with her paintings in order to identify what the marks and the forms might be trying to tell her. She works on several canvases at a time, each one influencing the next, in constant call and response. “I enjoy this complicated relationship to the painting that develops over time and across a body of work,” notes Gilfilen.

Line, the individual brushstroke, forms the backbone of her work. Gilfilen’s calligraphic approach leads the eye around the canvas and form the essence of her paintings. Whether thick or thin, straight, diagonal, or curved, lines have a depth, weight, character, and descriptive power.

“I love line and think it captures everything: a record of time, a description of edges, rhythm, emotion, authorship,” she notes. “I want the paintings to come out of that.”

What is thrilling about her paintings is how they straddle the line between frantic scrawl and idiosyncratic calligraphy. Is the viewer looking at childlike scrawl or purposeful arabesques, which pirouette around the picture plane in the hope of finding an elusive image or form?

Gilfilen’s gestured-based work shares stylistic affinities with the New York School, but she is her own artist with her own set of priorities. Unlike her predecessors, she is more interested in illusion and the conjuring of hidden forms from the act of painting. “I want to make those actions into things,” Gilfilen remarks. When asked what separates her work from Abstract Expressionists, she says “We are all just pulling out the threads of the fabric of what we have seen, or the paintings we identify with, and reweaving them. It is like the folk songs that are passed down and rewritten with a slightly different rhythm in the next generation.”

One of the joys experienced when looking at Gilfilen’s paintings is wrestling between two forces: On the one hand, viewers may try to identify a recognizable shape; on the other hand, they may find themselves just taking in the painting itself, surrendering to the spectacle. Gilfilen is aware of the seemingly contradictory forces in her work, and how they may undo or undermine each other. She states:

“For me, there is a huge tension between the basic immersion in making the painting and what that can come to suggest. The work grows as I work, and I have to suspend my expectations of what I think it will be. To be right at the edge of recognizing form is very invigorating, and it surprises me, but only feels true when I have been completely present with the elements of painting. When this happens, I feel I can grasp something made-up, invented, but also sort of “real” or concrete. I love the chase between what slips right into the visual consciousness as I am making the painting and [what] slips away. Every slight move or shift of the line changes the outcome, so yes, I am continuously undoing the painting in my quest to find it!”

The hidden forms in her thickets of lines reside on the tip of the tongue. Part of the fun at looking at her work is trying to match the association to its word.

Elizabeth Gilfilen is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BFA from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Awards include Yaddo, The Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Space Program, Gallery Aferro Studio Residency, Alijra Emerge Fellowship, and The Bronx Museum’s AIM Program. She was invited to make prints at Oehme Graphics in Colorado and was a Studio Immersion Project Fellow at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York .

Recent group exhibitions include Morgan Lehman Gallery, the Blackburn 20/20 Space, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York, NY, and Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA. Other group exhibitions include the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Islip Art Museum, and Lehman College Gallery. Solo exhibitions include Fred Giampietro Gallery in New Haven, CT; the Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ; Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ; and John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY. Her work has been published twice in New American Paintings; reviewed in Two Coats of Paint, The Boston Globe, The Newark Star-Ledger and The New York Times.

The exhibition will be on view at Majestic Theatre Condominium Association through June 30, 2016. For further information, please visit us at SILVERMAN or call number (201) 435-8000. Majestic Theatre is located at 222 Montgomery Street in Jersey City.

“Elizabeth Gilfilen: Nightcrawler” is the thirtieth exhibition that Brendan Carroll will organize for SILVERMAN. For additional information on the artist, go here: elizabethgilfilen.com.

SILVERMAN has presented the works of Robert Hendrickson, Sarah Becktle, Kati Vilim, Mark Dagley, Candy Le Sueur, Ed Fausty, Anna Mogilevsky, Ali Harrington, Sara Wolfe, Anne Percoco, Shauna Finn, Melanie Vote, Paul Lempa, Fanny Allié, Michael Meadors, John A. Patterson, Charlotte Becket, Roger Sayre, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Tom McGlynn, Margaret Murphy, Valeri Larko, Tenesh Webber, Glenn Garver, Jennifer Krause Chapeau, Michelle Doll, Tim Heins, Megan Maloy, Laurie Riccadonna, Thomas John Carlson, Tim Daly, Ann Flaherty, Scott Taylor, Jason Seder, Sara Wolfe, Beth Gilfilen, Andrzej Lech, Hiroshi Kumagai, Victoria Calabro, Asha Ganpat, Darren Jones, Ryan Roa,Laura Napier, Risa Puno, Nyugen E. Smith, Amanda Thackray, and Kai Vierstra.

Transportation directions from Lower Manhattan to the Majestic Theatre in downtown Jersey City.

 

Sarah Becktel: Modern Menagerie

SILVERMAN AND MAJESTIC THEATRE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION presents
Sarah Becktel: Modern Menagerie

Opening Reception: Friday, November 6, 2015, 7–9 p.m.

The Majestic Theatre Condominiums
222 Montgomery Street
Jersey City, NJ 07302
201.435.8000

Exhibition on view in the lobby from November 6, 2015 – February 26, 2016

Sarah Becktel, Restless Tides, 2015, Oil on canvas, 18 x 30 inches. Courtesy of Sarah Becktel, sarahbecktel.com

“The word contemporary is important to my work. I’m interested in depicting the world as it is presented to me, and I experience it.” —Sarah Becktel

SILVERMAN AND MAJESTIC THEATRE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION presents “Sarah Becktel: Modern Menagerie,” curated by Brendan Carroll. This exhibition will present approximately twenty works that includes oil paintings on panel and colored pencil works on paper. Her brand of contemporary realism is defined by clarity of vision, attention to detail, and technical virtuosity.

Becktel uses portraits and landscapes to transform the unusual and make it natural, from stuffed animal heads in a tavern in Wyoming to domestic goats grazing in a cemetery in gritty Jersey City. Her paintings and drawings explore how humans relate to and interact with animals in the modern world. Her work is as much about biodiversity, sustainability, and conservation, as it is about the sober observation and depiction of the world.

Animals appear as confidant, pastoral beast, and stuffed trophy. In one painting, the artist and a raccoon sit at a table to share confidences and Oreo cookies. In another, goats stand and loll atop headstones in an overgrown Harsimus cemetery under the midday sun. However, the relationship between species is not always as benign as it appears. Several works depict taxidermy animal heads eyeballing the viewer with their impenetrable, and vacant stares.

Sarah Becktel, Lost and Found III, 2015, Oil on Panel, 11 x 14 inches

The German Expressionist Franz Marc said that painting animals brought out “All that was good in me.” Becktel shares the same sentiment. “Interacting with and observing animals probably gives me the highest level of joy,” notes Becktel. Her love of animals did not seamlessly find its way into her work. At first, she used them as symbols for abstract psychological ideas. Now, animals are more the central subjects of her work.

The development of her paintings is not a fixed phenomenon. At times, an image is the impetus that drives the painting. “I could be out in the world and observe something that just sticks with me…so in that case, the imagery is the inspiration into a painting composition,” she notes. That said, Becktel does not always rely on the visual alone to inspire an image. In some instances, an abstract idea is the motivation for a given work. In these cases, she has to find “the best way to translate the concept into a tangible image.”

Becktel, who began studying with a classical realist at age ten, is proud of her academic training, but she is not beholden to it. Reference photography plays a pivotal role in the development of her paintings. “Anytime something strikes me as interesting, I snap a photo,” says Becktel. “I’m always coming across things that might end up in a painting.” The link between photograph and realized painting is not instantaneous. It may take months or years before the initial interest develops into a more concrete painting idea. During the gestation period, she often clicks through her photo libraries to see what jumps out at her.

Sarah Becktel, Wolf Tavern, 2013, Oil on Panel, 20 x 16 inches

Once a raw idea starts to become more tangible, she will do some sketches to determine the scale and composition of a piece. Sketches never become complete works. She finds spending too much time on preliminary drawings can sap the excitement and energy of her paintings. “I like to save the detail for the actual painting,” notes Becktel.

Becktel is drawn to representational painting because it puts her in control of how much information to give or withhold from the viewer. “You essentially set the scene for them,” Becktel said. What I find interesting in her work is how it manages to create immediately recognizable images without sacrificing mystery or suggestion.

Sarah Becktel is a painter who specializes in contemporary realism. She received her B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art in 2005. She continued her studies of figurative drawing and painting at Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia and the Art Students League in New York City. Jersey City Museum, Trenton City Museum, Monmouth Museum, Ben Shahn Center for Visual Arts, and Salmagundi Art Club, among other institutions, have organized exhibitions featuring of her work. Becktel has received numerous honors, including PLAYA Artist Residency in Summer Lake, Oregon, and Brush Creek Arts Foundation Residency in Laramie, Wyoming. She currently resides in Jersey City, NJ and works out of her studio in Newark, NJ.

The exhibition will be on view at Majestic Theatre Condominium Association through February 26, 2016. For further information, please visit us at SILVERMAN or call number (201) 435-8000. Majestic Theatre is located at 222 Montgomery Street in Jersey City.

“Sarah Becktel: Modern Menagerie” is the twenty-eighth exhibition that Brendan Carroll will organize for SILVERMAN. For additional information on the artist, go here: Sarah Becktel.

SILVERMAN has presented the works of Kati Vilim, Mark Dagley, Candy Le Sueur, Ed Fausty, Anna Mogilevsky, Ali Harrington, Sara Wolfe, Anne Percoco, Shauna Finn, Melanie Vote, Paul Lempa, Fanny Allié, Michael Meadors, John A. Patterson, Charlotte Becket, Roger Sayre, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Tom McGlynn, Margaret Murphy, Valeri Larko, Tenesh Webber, Glenn Garver, Jennifer Krause Chapeau, Michelle Doll, Tim Heins, Megan Maloy, Laurie Riccadonna, Thomas John Carlson, Tim Daly, Ann Flaherty, Scott Taylor, Jason Seder, Sara Wolfe, Beth Gilfilen, Andrzej Lech, Hiroshi Kumagai, Victoria Calabro, Asha Ganpat, Darren Jones, Ryan Roa,Laura Napier, Risa Puno, Nyugen E. Smith, Amanda Thackray, and Kai Vierstra.

Transportation directions from Lower Manhattan to downtown Jersey City.

Transportation directions from Lower Manhattan to downtown Jersey City.

Kati Vilim: Radius of Action

SILVERMAN AND MAJESTIC THEATRE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION present
Kati Vilim: Radius of Action

Opening Reception: July 8, 2015, 6–8 p.m.

The Majestic Theatre Condominiums
222 Montgomery Street
Jersey City, NJ 07302
201.435.8000

Exhibition on view in the lobby from July 8, 2015 — October 31, 2015

Kati Vilim, 36 squares, 2011, oil, canvas on wood, 48 x 48 inches

“I am fascinated by the discoveries available through the physicality of paint, color and a simple shape as the square and how these sensory experiences can opening up our awareness and elevate us.” — Kati Vilim

SILVERMAN AND THE MAJESTIC THEATRE CONDOMINIUMS ASSOCIATION present “Kati Vilim: Radius of Action,” curated by Brendan Carroll. This exhibition features seven hard-edge color paintings that were made between 2007 and 2012. Each painting is oil on canvas mounted on wood panel.

Vilim’s straight-faced paintings assert themselves like a prizefighter’s stiff jab. They open up space. She is a master colorist and composer of simple flat shapes, which often have more than three straight lines. In her compositions, both regular and irregular forms jostle, intersect, and overlap to create a dynamic sense of depth, space, and movement. That said, the primacy of the picture plane is never broken. Flatness is key. Surfaces unruffled.

Kati Vilim, 3d2d, 2011, oil, canvas on wood, 48 x 48 inches

Color perception — which involves psychology, physiology, biology, chemistry and physics — is one of the central concerns in Vilim’s work. Due to its complexity, she uses a back-to-basics approach to color, which is formal and playful. Most of her work feature a specific set of colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, red, green, and blue. They appear in unspoiled fields — pure, unrepentant, bold. Often, she pits opposing colors next to each other in confined settings, which seemingly advance and recede in perpetual motion. The results are electrifying. What unifies her work is their strong sense of color, clean lines, impersonal execution, and hard edges.

Preliminary drawings provide the foundation for each painting. In this stage, improvisation is not only welcome, but it is also encouraged. For Vilim, works on paper give her the freedom to try multiple ideas. “After testing a few different directions, the final design usually develops itself,” Vilim notes. “I define all the details, and based on that drawing, I start to work on the painting.”

Kati Vilim, Crossing Beyond, 2011, oil, canvas on wood, 48 x 70 inches

Here are Vilim’s reasons why she prefers abstraction:

“I became interested in abstraction just as I started to paint. It is hard to answer why I started to work with structure and abstract shapes instead of figures or narratives. When I thought about it later, it did become clear that abstraction is important not only for me but for every human. It is part of our everyday life, although we might be not aware of that.”

What I find so intriguing about Vilim’s abstract paintings is how they require, and reward, sustained attention. I imagine some people may find them easy to dismiss, but they’d be foolish to do so.

Kati Vilim is an internationally recognized abstract artist. She investigates the visual language as an abstract system, creating new content based on algorithms, color theory and rhythmic patterns. Her media ranges from oil painting, printmaking and drawing, to electric light installation and digital animation. Her work has been featured in numerous galleries and museums, including The Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery, NJCU, Jersey City, NJ; Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE; Walsh Gallery, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ; Paul Robeson Galleries, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ; Gallery of Modern Art, Veszprem, Hungary, and Panepinto Galleries, Jersey City, NJ, to name a few. The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and Jersey City Independent have reviewed her work. Vilim received her MFA from both, University of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary and Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ. Vilim was born in Budapest, Hungary. She lives and works in Jersey City, NJ.

The exhibition will be on view at Majestic Theatre Condominium Association through October 31, 2015. For further information, please visit us at SILVERMAN or call number (201) 435-8000.

“Kati Vilim: Radius of Action” is the twenty-sixth exhibition that Brendan Carroll will organize for SILVERMAN. For additional information on the artist, go here: Kati Vilim.

Transportation directions from Lower Manhattan to downtown Jersey City.

Anna Mogilevsky: Mirrors, Mirages and Archetypes

SILVERMAN AND MAJESTIC THEATRE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION present
Anna Mogilevsky: Mirrors, Mirages, and Archetypes.

Opening Reception: Friday, March 6, 2015, 7–9 p.m.

The Majestic Theatre Condominiums
222 Montgomery Street
Jersey City, NJ 07302
201.435.8000

Exhibition on view in the lobby from March 6, 2015, to June 30, 2015.

“I create allegories of the inner workings of the mind with archetypal narratives in which all of the roles and characters are played by my own reflections” – Anna Mogilevsky

SILVERMAN AND MAJESTIC THEATRE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION present “Anna Mogilevsky: Mirrors, Mirages, and Archetypes,” curated by Brendan Carroll. This exhibition will include seven large-scale works on paper that the artist started in 2013. If there is one word to describe her sumptuously drawn works, it is enigmatic.

Working on paper with pencil, Mogilevsky has created interlacing self-portraits that are forged through a synthesis of personal contemplation and imagination. At first glance, the drawings appear to depict straightforward domestic interiors populated by young women. On repeated inspection, they reveal a peculiar, idiosyncratic world that is inhabited by one character—the artist herself—performing multiple roles: the glutton, the provocateur, and the double, to name a few.

In Point of View, we see five representations of Mogilevsky. Each Mogilevsky has her back turned to the viewer, as she stands, squats, and stumbles in a spare room with a large window. In Veiling and Unveiling, Mogilevsky appears three times, but facial recognition is obscured. A seated and standing Mogilevsky are presented in Allegory of Drawing, but both versions avoid eye contact with the viewer. In Searching for the Light, Mogilevsky stares into the mouth of her seated opposite. These drawings mimic traditional portraiture in name only: The scenes feel remote, not of this world, dreamlike. There is not a single work here that will not reward close looking for its virtuoso draftsmanship and cerebral acuity.

The artist’s approach to portraiture begins with an idea or image that comes through a moment of inspiration. This sudden realization can occur at any time: while she is listening to music, walking through a park, or watching a movie. Sometimes the image can be realized immediately. At other times, it can take several sketches. Mogilevsky’s sketch serves as roadmap for a photo shoot, in which the artist inhabits the characters she has envisaged in her mind’s eye. From these photographs, the artist composes a digital collage in Photoshop that serves as the foundation of her drawings. In addition to her computer-generated collages, she often relies on individual photographs to inform her pieces, but Mogilevsky’s getting into character cannot be overlooked. “I feel that my poses have to be as close to the original sketch as possible,” says the artist. “I have to act out these archetypes in order to mimic the emotional and psychological states of these characters.”

Most of the settings are based on the artist’s actual living spaces. However, she modifies the scenes to serve her ultimate vision. For example, she will remove or add furniture, as well as introduce specific props to achieve her mental picture. That said, Mogilvesky does not want the viewer to get caught up in the visual trappings. For her, the key element to understanding her work is the interaction between the figures. “I am trying to create a tension between a place that is familiar to us yet foreign at the same time,” notes the artist. “The self-portraits are a way for me to materialize these intangible and mysterious moments and make the emotional aspect of each archetypal portrait more felt.”

In a world where selfies have become everyday expressions, why is self-portraiture still relevant in the art world today? The answer is intention. The selfie, in most cases, is a record of what the picture taker is doing in a given moment. By stark contrast, an artist’s self-portrait is a deliberate meditation on the artist’s place in the world, the universe, art history, and time itself. In Mogilevsky’s case, self-portraiture raises more questions than provides concrete answers, and that’s part of its uncanny appeal. “Self-portraiture reveals something about artists and their understanding of the world, their thoughts and feeling about the particular subject, their psychology, etc.,” says Mogilevsky. Here, she walks a fine line between technical virtuosity and conceptualism, and part of the joy in looking at these works is seeing how she balances those competing ends.

The exhibition will be on view at Majestic Theatre Condominium Association through June 30, 2015. For further information, please visit us at SILVERMAN or call number (201) 435-8000.

“Anna Mogilevsky: Mirrors, Mirages, and Archetypes” is the twenty-fourth exhibition that Brendan Carroll will organize for SILVERMAN. For additional information on the artist, go here: annamogilevsky.com

Born in Russia, Anna Mogilevsky immigrated to the United States in 1993. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design and earned her MFA at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her work explores the depth of human character using her archetypal selves through mediums including pencil, photography, and performance. Mogilevsky has lectured at RISD, Northeastern University, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Dartmouth, and Bridgewater State University. She is currently leading her own artist development program, which offers online and private instruction.

Transportation directions from Lower Manhattan to downtown Jersey City.