EXHIBITIONS
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JC Friday Night Preview: Friday, 6/3/16, 5-7pm Artist Reception: Sunday, 6/5/16, 3-6pm Workshop/Talk: Saturday 6/11/16 & Sunday, 6/12/16, 3-6pm Curators across the state of NJ were asked to nominate drawing artists for DRAWING ROOMS’ first statewide drawing survey featuring Alaine Becker, Anne Novado, Caroline Burton, Harriet Finck, Heejung Kim. Ibou Ndoye, Joseph Gerard Sabatino, Marsha Goldberg, Pat Brentano. New Drawing New Jersey brings together some of the best artists currently working in drawing from across the state to Jersey City’s DRAWING ROOMS. Anne Trauben, DRAWING ROOMS’ Curator, asked curators throughout New Jersey to join with her in choosing artists for this exhibition by recommending artists who have shown consistent excellence and innovation in drawing. Anne connected with these artists, working with them to choose exciting, masterful, and diverse viewpoints in drawing. The exhibition spans nine gallery rooms. Each artist is represented by a select body of work with one artist per room. Curators who nominated artists for this year’s exhibition include Donna Gustafson PhD., Curator, Rutgers’ Zimmerli Gallery, New Brunswick; Jeanne Brasile, Gallery Director, Seton Hall’s Walsh Gallery, Newark; Mary Birmingham, Curator, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit; Midori Yoshimoto, Gallery Director and Curator at NJCU, Jersey City; Anonda Bell, Director and Chief Curator, Rutgers’ Paul Robeson Gallery, Newark, and Victor Davson, Executive Director, Aljira, Newark. DRAWING ROOMS is very excited to present our first statewide survey of drawing. An understanding of drawing as vital to one’s development and innovation in the visual arts, is at the heart of all we do. In our three years of exhibition programming, we have featured drawing, often exploring its creative relationships to painting, and have found the principles and processes of drawing in three dimensional forms as well. As an art-space on the edge of the Jersey side of the Hudson, we have worked towards fulfilling our potential in making a place of community for New Jersey and New York artists to know each other and exhibit and work together. In presenting these NJ artists here working purely in drawing, we recognize and are proud of their accomplishments and hope to connect them to a wider audience. Artist’s themes in the exhibit explore drawing as both a conceptual and expressive process. Pat Brentano’s realistic, environmental renderings suggest she is one with nature. Ibou Ndoye’s monumental figures draw from both his African and American culture. Harriet Finck builds graphic linear marks into shimmering, iridescent patterns. Joseph Gerard Sabatino produced a chart-like, arcane writing system during a period of self-imposed isolation. Caroline Burton’s expansive grid drawings describe a three-dimensional movement in space. Biomorphic, animated beings seem to take shape and emerge from Anne Novado’s swirls of graphite. Marsha Goldberg’s delicate smoke forms document wars in the Middle East. In the energetic, chaotic works by Alaine Becker, drawn line and black and white masses seem like living beings pushing against their environment. Heejung Kim’s web of transcendent pattern and radiant human shapes illuminate an invisible world. Director James Pustorino says, “One of the best aspects of this project is how it gave us an opportunity to interact with arts professionals from across the state, many of whom have been working for years developing their institutions and exhibitions, promoting New Jersey artists. We are grateful to the curators, art centers and museums throughout New Jersey that worked with us on this project and thank them all for their ongoing support, involvement and trust in us as we continue to establish DRAWING ROOMS as a vital space for contemporary art in Hudson County.” The upcoming free Draw-a-thon, Saturday, 6/25/16, 10am - 8:30pm, will be another opportunity to visit the exhibit, see and engage in drawing activities and bid on area artist’s works in our silent and live auction. |