Spring is crisp and colorful. Summer is sunny and just plain fun, plus it’s good to get away, travel, and work on your tan. But Fall: it’s the most crisp and fun of them all. Do you ever notice how the air is more refreshing and people are generally more relaxed after summertime? I mean, they no longer spend their weekend hours escaping town on the LIRR/Amtrak/Metro North, etc. In the Fall there’s more reason to stay close to home and enjoy the neighborhood. This week’s art shows have captured the spirit of the season as everyone prepares to celebrate new shows at Wayfarers, Valentine (they have a new location!), Schema Projects, Theodore:Art, Songs for Presidents and The Parlour Bushwick. We’ll see you there!
#1 “Bobbie Oliver Paintings” @ Valentine (FRI 6-9 PM)
581 Woodward Avenue, Ridgewood
Valentine gallery has moved to a new location in Ridgewood! On Friday, September 25th they will inaugurate the new space with “Bobbie Oliver Paintings,” a solo exhibition curated with Mary-Ann Monforton.
#2 “Eulogy For A Dyke Bar” @ Wayfarers (FRI 5-11 PM)
1109 Dekalb Avenue
Macon Reed’s “Eulogy For The Dyke Bar” is the culminating project for her 2015 Summer Artist in Residence at Wayfarers, paying tribute to the legacy to the rare presence of dyke and lesbian bars within the gay and queer cultural landscape. A full bar, pool table and neon signs will fill the gallery space with performances beginning at 7:30 pm.
#3 “Flat, Baroque and Berserk” @ Schema Projects (FRI 6-9 PM)
92 St Nicholas Avenue
“Flat, Baroque and Berserk” opens Friday at Schema Projects. Described for an “explosive fairy flower palette with the deftness and experience of a Celtic calligrapher,” artist Nina Bovasso’s works on paper have all of this and more going for them: romanticism, atnit-design, pattern gone-amok, pulsing clusters and elements un-hinged from their usual forces of gravity.
#4 “No Irony Here” @ The Parlour Bushwick (FRI 6-8 PM)
791 Bushwick Avenue
The Parlour Bushwick opens with “No Irony Here,” using its theme to express disappointment, explore gender identity and visualize conflicting desires of self-expression. David Kramer’s imagery of ease, wealth and romance is turned on its head by feelings of discomfort and disillusionment. Video works by Cate Giordano create a melodramatic world of multiple gender personas, while Claudia Bitran deconstructs popular videos and Hollywood movies to create a fantasy world. Joking with his own self-doubt, Paul Gagner shares an inner dialogue on the struggle between abstraction and object in “Backscratch Fever,” a combo of abstract lines and actual fingernail scratches to the skin.
#5 “The Lincoln Paintings: 2003-2015” @ Songs For Presidents (SAT 7-10 PM)
1673 Gates Avenue, Ridgewood
Fearless and purposeful, David B. Frye’s “The Lincoln Paintings: 2003-2015” mixes confrontation and contradiction with 12 years worth of work from this series. His work and content result from his take on the ideal social order that historical paintings project, sharing with us his gaze through an enlightened lens.
#6 Samuel Laurence Cunnane @ Theodore:Art (SAT 6-9 PM)
56 Bogart Street
Moments from the march of everyday life take a rich and complex turn in Samuel Laurence Cunnane’s series of images documented across Portugal, Germany and Ireland. For his first solo show in the U.S., here at Theodore:Art, he went with the ‘idea of witnessing’ the everyday complexities and beauty of his scenes and subjects, embracing the act of getting close while reveling in the ‘cinematics’ of the everyday.
Check these out during weekend gallery hours
“Family Portraits” @ Hood Gallery (SAT 1-6 PM, SUN by appointment)
1397 Myrtle Avenue
When Brandi Twilley’s home burned down in 1998, she was just sixteen and through her memory and what was left of surviving photos she created a family portrait series, now on display at Hood Gallery through September 27th. Since few family photos survived the fire, she first attempted the series by merging the photos with images found on the Internet, but found that free association and leaving some source material behind was a more direct route to her memories.
“Umpawaug’s Bloom” @ Kimberly-Klark Gallery (SUN 12-5 PM)
788 Woodward Avenue, Ridgewood
Kimberly-Klark Gallery opened “Umpawaug’s Bloom” on September 5th, featuring assemblage and collage by Erin Jane Nelson, Phil Cote and Ashley Carter, supplemented with works by the late Ray Johnson. With references to photography, the combination of objects address a connection to horticulture, described by Hyperallergic as “mutating into the strange hybrid” with the absence, yet the presence, of flowers in bloom.