Past Exhibitions at Ober Gallery

ober gallery	artists	gallery	current exhibition	past exhibitions	contact	directions
			current exhibition	past exhibitions

Please scroll down for a complete list of our past exhibitions

Alexander Zhdanov Russian Nonconformist March 23 - April 28, 2013
Alexander Zhdanov Untitled 1992 Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas 60" x 62"	Alexander Zhdanov, having been born in Rostov-on-Don in 1938 at the height of Stalin’s terror, was deeply affected by World War II and the massive dislocations and deprivations that followed. His father, an artist turned soldier, and his mother, a librarian, raised him on military bases in the USSR’s northern regions, stretching from Arkhangelsk in the west to the Pacific. Zhdanov’s expressionist works draw on the nineteenth century Russian tradition of “wanderer” artists who rejected academic painting in favor of landscape and folkloric themes. Through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, Zhdanov belonged to a group of Russian nonconformist artists who refused to abide by state-sanctioned “socialist realism” and instead challenged the regime’s repressive policies. On four occasions he was expelled from art schools. In 1974, he participated in the now infamous “bulldozer” exhibit in a Moscow park which KGB and militia officers disrupted by bulldozing the artists’ works. In 1987 Zhdanov and his wife left their homeland and settled in Washington, D.C. Alexander continued to produce his art until his death in 2006. We hope you will visit the gallery to see this extraordinary artist’s works, on canvas and on paper, from both his Soviet and American periods, which we have managed to assemble.

Yury Kharchenko The Scarlet Flower is January 19 - March 22, 2013
Yury Kharchenko House No 11 2012 Oil on Canvas 160 cm x 130 cm	I became acquainted with the work of 26-year-old Russian artist Yury Kharchenko while reading the Winter 2012 Style magazine section of the New York Times. The feature article on the house and art collection of Mike Meire displayed one of Yury's paintings alongside works by Damien Hirst, Sergej Jensen and other prominent artists. I spoke with Yury, who lives in Berlin, and offered him a solo show. He accepted. This will be his first show in the United States. Yury joins the ranks of several important Russian artists who have had their first American show at Ober Gallery. The late Yury Kuprianov, who presently holds the price record for the sale of a Russian contemporary photograph at Sotheby's, showed last year. It was his first solo show in the United States. Aleksander Konstantinov, Tatiana Badanina, and Vladimir Nasedkin all has a solo show with Ober Gallery. A number of our Russian artists continue to break records at Sotheby's and Christie's. Just three weeks ago, Vladimir Nemukhin sold a painting for 168,000 dollars at auction. We remain committed to introducing our collectors and the American public to important Russian art, both nonconformist and contemporary.

GEOFFREY DORFMAN NEW PAINTINGS November 24 - December 22, 2012
Geoffrey Dorfman Nectare Oil on Canvas 42" x 46"	Ober Gallery is pleased to announce a show featuring new paintings by NY artist Geoffrey Dorfman. James Kalm writing for the Brooklyn Rail says of Geoffrey Dorfman's approach to painting, "Geoffrey Dorfman is an artist who has spent the better part of the last three and a half decades immersed in the implications of what it means to be painting now. He’s an artist for whom the flame of the Abstract Expressionists and the New York School still burns hot. These are paintings about painting. There are no ironies, no clever theories, and no subversive aesthetic gambits. The discussion of these paintings requires one to use the language of painting inasmuch as reference to other things would be mere allusion. A few other painters working today like Scott Richter or Geoff Davis have developed a kind of flatfooted pragmatism that makes use of paint as a quasi-sculptural medium focusing on its mass, its chunkiness, and the bravado of a glob of paint. Dorfman conversely is also committed to the notion of the classic brush stroke, the sensual rebound and multitude of responses possible with bristles rubbing on canvas. "For any artist working as long as Dorfman has it’s a constant challenge to avoid formula, to try to keep their facility from becoming a limitation. “If the paint starts to look like something other than paint, like sky or water, I change it,” he stated. The pictures seem to be constructed out of a negation of anticipated action, a struggle to maintain the creative momentum by proceeding in the most unexpected rather than expected ways. To work, this requires in almost a hyper-conscious state, being aware of the precedents that should be avoided while continuing to construct the picture with a coherence of composition and chromatic design. Ironically these painted negations or erasures have the opposite action from philosophic or rhetorical negation. In the painted case they are objects of suggestive potential… With the rapid proliferation of media available to artists today, the privileged position that painting once held is no longer dominant. It is however fascinating to ponder the anthropological and cultural relationships one can have with a 50,000 year old tradition that just aren’t available to someone working within a ten — forty year tradition. For Geoffrey Dorfman this relationship to painting is a direct inheritance from the New York School. For the spectator, it’s an opportunity to observe a journeyman practitioner facing the trepidation and adventure of maintaining a vision while he pushes into the future."

SANDRA LERNER EXPANDING UNIVERSES October 13 - November 18, 2012
Sandra Lerner Distant Universe 2010 Oil and Mixed Media on Linen 28" x 59"	Expanding Universes, an exhibition of new paintings by Sandra Lerner that displays anew her dramatic use of calligraphic form and subtle color to delve into the eternal mysteries of the universe, will open at the Ober Gallery on October 13. The works will remain on view through November 18. Her recent paintings, Lerner says, draw upon her long exploration of the similarities between Eastern philosophy and the latest theories in physics and cosmology. “I try to incorporate calligraphy's expressive force to conjure up references to nature as well the multiple and expanding universes that exist.” In an essay on Lerner’s new work, art writer Phyllis Braff says, “A very physical, very energetic and very direct interpretation of Japanese calligraphy became a part of Sandra Lerner’s painting approach at an early point in her career. Now, …she further explores calligraphy’s potential by combining vigorous gestural marks with evocative fields of subtle color. It is an approach that seems to heighten the bold power of the configuration. It also calls attention to the way Lerner investigates calligraphy’s expressive force rather than its traditional cognitive associations.” Lerner’s paintings also seek to represent in tactile form her interest in cosmology and string theory. Critic Donald Kuspit, in a commentary on an earlier series of Lerner paintings, wrote that her vision “focuses on the irreversible transformation of immaterial light and dark matter, that is, the communication/communion between contradictory realms of being and consciousness, implying their inner unity.” He said they “made Lerner’s concern with string theory explicit.” “It is important to note,” Kuspit said, “that in the theory what seems abstract is profoundly concrete – like Lerner’s paintings, which are abstract in form and symbol, yet deeply concrete, as their rich texture makes clear.” Lerner lives and works in New York City and Sherman, Connecticut. She received a bachelor's degree in art from Hofstra University and also studied independently with Leo Manso, Jerry Okomoto and Harry Sternberg. Later, she studied calligraphy and Japanese painting with the master Kampo Harada in Tokyo, Japan, in 1981. She has participated in many one-person and group exhibitions throughout the United States and in Japan. She is represented in numerous public and private collections, including The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY; Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ; Kampo Museum, Kyoto, Japan; World Study Museum, Fukuoka, Japan; Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, NY and 3M Corporation. She has also created sets for performances by Eiko and Koma, the acclaimed Japanese avant-garde modern dancers and choreographers.

LOUISA MARIE SUMMER JENNIFER'S FAMILY September 13 - October 7, 2012
Louisa Marie Summer She Gets Away with Murder 2012 Fine Art Print on Aluminum Dibond 59" x 39.4"	I was introduced to the work of the German photographer, Louisa Marie Summer, by my friend Ray Learsy, the well known collector of contemporary art and board member of the Whitney Museum. Ray spoke very highly of Louisa's work. In fact, I have never heard Ray speak so glowingly of an artist. My reaction to Louisa's work was similar to Ray's. I was not only struck by the raw and beautiful power of her photographs, but by the quiet dignity that underpins them. The photographs of Jennifer’s Family share Louisa Marie Summer’s experience with Jennifer, a 26 year-old first-generation Puerto Rican woman, whom one day she approached in South Providence, RI. This area is an urban neighborhood with a large African-American and Hispanic population, high unemployment and crime rates, and where many families live well below the poverty line. For more than two years Louisa has been portraying the daily life of Jennifer, who lives with her Native American life partner Tompy and their four children in a rundown three-bedroom apartment at or near the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder. In spite of difficult living conditions, poverty, and illness, Jennifer remains optimistic while thoroughly caring for her children. Over time Louisa literally became part of the daily life of an America family she cares for and who cares for her. The quote of Jennifer’s life partner and also the title of her short video documentary, Respect Goes a Long Way, perfectly expresses their relationship based on mutual trust, respect, and understanding. To support the family’s voice, she and writer Mairéad Byrne derived short essays from interviews with the family. The words reveal details about the family’s relationships and emotions, as well as their finances and child-rearing philosophies. They reflect them as trustworthy human beings, while also revealing the contradictions and tensions between what they say and how they act. With this work Louisa wants to give people a voice, particularly those who cope with poverty and despair. She is convinced that honest and compassionate images play an important role as a “social conscience” that can change people’s views or at least raise awareness.

MALLORY LAKE, LIGHT REVISITED August 8 - September 9, 2012
Mallory Lake Vanderbilt Hall 2011-12 Pastel on Paper 24.5" x 15.5"	I was first introduced to the art of Mallory Lake several years ago when it was exhibited at the former Bachelier Cardonsky Gallery in Kent, Connecticut. I was captivated by the extraordinary light that emanated from these works and by her deft handling of pastel as a medium. When I opened my gallery in 2006, I asked Mallory to participate in a group show. Visitors to the gallery expressed great admiration for her exquisite pastels of Italy. In a casual conversation with Mallory two years ago, we both realized we shared a love for trains and stations. I asked her if she would be willing to do an entire show on this theme. She said yes. Two years passed…and the results of her hard labor reached my gallery this past Thursday, August 9th. I was stunned. These works are indeed extraordinary. I challenge the world to find an artist who works in pastels as superbly as Mallory Lake. Come visit!

KATHERINE BRADFORD, NEW WORK July 12 - August 8, 2012
	Ober Gallery is pleased to announce a show featuring new paintings by Katherine Bradford. Pictured at left: Shower Behind Shade Oil on Canvas 46 x 37 inches

NEW PAINTINGS BY SALEM, NY ARTIST HARRY ORLYK June 9 - July 8, 2012
	Ober Gallery is pleased to announce a show featuring new paintings by Salem, NY artist Harry Orlyk. Over 40 works will be featured at the exhibition. Link to Interview with Harry Orlyk on NPR We hope you can make this extraordinary exhibit.

THREE PAINTERS IN A PROVACATIVE NEW SHOW ENTITLED “DANGEROUS CURVE AHEAD.” May 5 - June 3, 2012
	Ober Gallery is pleased to announce a new show featuring the paintings and drawings of three New York artists, Katherine Bernhardt, Brendan Cass and Bill Saylor. All three artists paint in a bold and loose expressionist style that borders on representation and abstraction. Katherine Bernhardt paints fashion models, Moroccan carpets and swatches. She is best known in the international art world for her paintings of fashion models which we will be featuring in this show. Jerry Saltz, arguably the most important critic of contemporary art in New York writes “Her style is a hybrid of funk, pop and every kind of expressionism…I admire her for her raw, painterly nerve.” In the words of David Humphrey, a critic for Art in America, Brendan Cass, an artist who recently moved from Brooklyn to Cornwall, CT, “approaches the landscape from an almost completely imaginative perspective. Out of the frenzied cacophony of brush strokes, drips, spills, and blobs of acrylic paint, panoramic scenes emerge in shocking fluorescent colors that have rarely been seen since the days of Wild Style and Neo-Geo.” Bill Saylor paintings are borne out of Bill’s love for free, stream of consciousness inspired drawing. Originally from California, but now living in New York, the tension between stasis and action may be the defining feature of Bill’s powerful, graffiti-like, mysterious paintings. Click here to view more Installation images.

A MAJOR SHOW ON RUSSIAN NONCONFORMIST ART. FIVE OF THE MORE THAN 15 ARTISTS WERE FEATURED IN THE 2005 GUGGENHEIM SHOW, RUSSIA! February 4 - April 15, 2012
	Non-conformist emerged in the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Any artist whose work did not conform to the principles of Soviet Socialist Realism, or did not advance the Communist ideal was considered a non-conformist by the Soviet regime. Three categories were especially deemed unacceptable: religious, pornographic, and formalistic art, the latter referring to styles and movements such as Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. These artists were denied studios, materials, and public exhibition space. Inspired by their exposure to Western artistic trends at the Sixth World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in 1957, and their interaction with surviving students of Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant Garde artists of the 1920s, nonconformist artists began working in a variety of styles from the late 1950s. Censorship was renewed after Stalin’s successor, Khrushchev, attended the Moscow Manezh exhibition in 1962. He was infuriated by the near-abstract works. He threatened and humiliated several artists present, including the sculptor Ernst Neizvestny. World awareness of Russian non-conformist art began with the Soviet Government’s response to the first Fall Open Air Show of Paintings on September 15, 1974. Bulldozers and water cannons demolished the exhibition and destroyed several paintings; numerous arrests, forced hospitalizations, and discharges from work followed. In Soviet artistic circles the exhibition became known as the Bulldozer Exhibition. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of these non-conformist artists emigrated to Germany, France, and the United States where they continue to work in a variety of styles. Many more of these artists remain in Russia. In 2005, the Guggenheim Museum featured the works of Russian nonconformist artists in their show Russia! I am pleased to present this major show on the Russian Non-Conformists, featuring works by more than 15 artists.

PAUL WEINGARTEN: NEW PAINTINGS December 3, 2011 - January 22, 2012
Paul Weingarten under the bridge 2011 36" x 49"	Paul Weingarten is an expressionist painter from Montclair, New Jersey. He paints heavily textured paintings, building on the legacy of van Gogh, the Blue Rider Group and the German Expressionists. When I decided to open a gallery three years ago, Paul was the first artist I asked to show with me. He is among the best living American expressionist painter’s working today. His paintings are unique. No one paints like Paul. His admirers include Gail Levin, the leading art historian of Edward Hopper, and Larry Salander, owner of Salander O’Reilly Galleries. Clement Greenberg, arguably the most important American critic of the second half of the twentieth century, expressed strong admiration for Paul’s paintings. The eighteen paintings in this show draw inspiration from his New York surroundings as well as the hills and lakes of Litchfield County, Connecticut. Alfred Janson, art historian and critic, writes that Paul’s “ way of painting is not for the faint of heart…No preliminary drawings or oil sketches invented in the peaceful sanctuary of the studio are permitted here; only a rawness and immediacy of brush responding instantly to the impulses of the imagination.” Michael Kimmelman, art critic for the New York Times wrote that Paul’s paintings have “density and punch.” Paul Weingarten received his undergraduate degree from New York University in 1968. His work is in several museums including the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the High Museum in Atlanta.

FORD CRULL AND JOEL PERLMAN October 15 - November 14, 2011
Ford Crull My Annabel Lee 2010 Oil, graphite, oil stick 72" x 60"	Ford Crull’s paintings are characterized by their joy and spontaneity. Ford draws and paints in a very loose manner. Ford openly admits that when he creates he seeks to get into a zen-like state that allows for free mark and form making. Ford has even been known to create in the complete dark. Drawing on the legacy of the German expressionists, the European surrealists and Cy Twombly, Ford’s tension filled images can be both lyrically beautiful and grotesque. Joel Perlman’s sculpture comes out of the Russian constructivist tradition. Joel’s sculptures are explosive in the “potential energy” that emanates from them. Circular shapes propel forward, like the charging wheels of a runaway locomotive. Joel’s work plays with squares, triangles and circles. It took three decades for Joel to integrate the circle into his sculpture, a shape he always believed was too perfect to use. Its deliberate usage pumps unexpected dynamism into his sculpture. Joel’s work reminds us of a time when men, not machines, made industrial environments. We recall the era of foundries and furnaces and shipyards and iron works. This is an extraordinary show featuring the work of two artists with very different visions – one with a love of organic, spontaneous lines and forms, the other with a love for simple geometric shapes.

KAREN LeSAGE AND ELAINE HOUSMAN August 20 - September 25, 2011
Ober Gallery is pleased to announce a new show featuring new paintings by Connecticut painter, Karen LeSage and sculpture and new works on paper by New York City Sculptor Elaine Housman. Karen LeSage's paintings show a reverence for the compositional forms of Mark Rothko and the light of George Inness. This will be Karen's second show at Ober Gallery. Elaine Housman's sculpture and works on paper come squarely out of the legacy of German Expressionism. We look forward to introducing Elaine Housman's work to a new audience in Connecticut.

KENT ARTIST TOLLEF RUNQUIST AND NEW YORK SCULPTOR SCOTT KLING TO CELEBRATE OBER GALLERY’S FIFTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY July 23 - August 18, 2011
Tollef Runquist Magnolia Triangle Scott Kling Human Landscape I	Ober Gallery is pleased to present paintings and works on paper by Tollef Runquist, a landscape painter originally from Kent, CT who now resides in Rockland Maine. I first encountered the work of Tollef Runquist more than ten years ago at Jacques Kaplan’s gallery in Kent. Tollef was the youngest artist ever to show with Jacques Kaplan. Thirteen later, I am pleased to showcase Tollef’s paintings in his second Connecticut solo show. Tollef has emerged in the last five years as one of Maine’s most recognized and talented landscape painters. The show will also feature the sculpture of Scott Kling, an artist who works in the tradition of Brancusi and Arp. The show will feature his bronze nudes.

IRA BARKOFF IMPORTANT CONNECTICUT LANDSCAPE ARTIST June 11 - July 5, 2011
Ira Barkoff Sound of Sea 2010-2011 Oil on Canvas 30" x 60"	Ira Barkoff returns to Ober Gallery for his third solo show. Ira Barkoff is one of Connecticut’s best and most recognized landscape painters. A native of Cornwall, CT, Ira’s work continues to fuse two important traditions together: the New England landscape tradition and the legacy of American Abstract Expressionism. As a result, Barkoff’s work retains a spiritual and transcendent quality as well as a love for loose, powerful brush strokes. Barkoff’s influences range from Rembrandt (especially the great pen and ink drawings), to J.M.W. Turner’s late unfinished paintings, John Constable’s studies of clouds, the poetic subjectivity of Twachtman’s landscapes and Monet’s Water Lily Series, to name just a few. He admires the attitude of Caspar David Friedrich and the color of Van Gogh. More recently, he has embraced the gestural painting of Willem DeKooning.

JOHN FREDERICK WALKER: BOOKWORKS May 7 - June 5, 2011
Ober Gallery is pleased to announce “Bookworks,” a new show by Kent artist John Frederick Walker, his first solo exhibit in five years. The exhibition consists of Walker’s manipulations of the book form, ranging from large, bifurcated abstract wall works to image-laden splayed and bolted volumes. The works on exhibit all derive from actual books, or book fragments, radically altered. “In each case,” Kathryn Boughton wrote in her 2006 Litchfield County Times profile, “what remains becomes an armature for Mr. Walker’s drawing, a process that transforms these objects into original and evocative forms.” Walker’s involvement with the book is two-fold: He is also a well-known writer for many prominent publications on subjects that range from art and adventure travel to wine and wildlife. In addition, he is the author of two highly-praised books on natural history, A Certain Curve of Horn and Ivory’s Ghosts. Walker began exploring the book form through his art in the mid-1990s following extensive work in minimalist and post-minimalist modes. He has exhibited in Connecticut, New York, and Marfa, Texas. Walker’s art is in a number of private and public collections, including the Werner H. Kramarsky collection, the Center for Book Arts in New York, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

SO ZIK! March 18 - May 3, 2011
Participating Artists: Peter Acheson Brian Belott Katherine Bradford Brendan Cass Ford Crull Sarah Davis Ryan Frank Michael Galvin Michael Gellatly Jesse A. Greenberg KK Kozik Chris Martin Taylor McKimens Aga Ousseinov Bob Partington Scott Reeder Ulrich Wulff

RUSSIAN ARTIST WHO HOLDS THE RECORD AT SOTHEBYS AUCTION HOUSE FOR THE SALE OF A RUSSIAN CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPH Dec 4, 2010 - March 15, 2011
Ober Gallery is pleased to announce an extraordinary new show by Russian artist Vladimir Kuprianov. Kuprianov (also translated to “Kupriyanov”) stunned the art world in 2008 when his 14 part single work photograph sold at Sothebys in London for 130,000 dollars, establishing Kuprianov as the most important Russian contemporary artist working in the new digital tradition. Kuprianov’s show at Ober Gallery in Kent, CT marks Kuprianov's first solo show in the United States. In keeping with Ober Gallery’s commitment to exploring new trends in Russian art, Rob Ober invited Vladimir Kuprianov to spend the month of September in Chelsea, NY City (as part of Ober Gallery Russian Artist in Residence Program) to work on a new series exploring the American and Russian family in the late nineteenth and twentieth century. The show entitled “Family Photo Album” promises to be one of the most original and exciting shows of Russian art in the United States this year. Rob Ober Director, Ober Gallery

STEPHEN GARMEY October 30 - November 18, 2010
“With a rugged sense of architectural space, Stephen Garmey composes geometric wooden sculptures whose block-like components express a tension that recalls the Straits of Corinth and Stonehenge. They have the power and presence of monumental architectural experience. Brown and raw, this work appeals to our natural affection for the handsome and substantial quality of blocks of wood. The grain, which provides the only relief to the planar surfaces, heightens an organic effect that contrasts with the continuity and simplicity of their shape. The subtle irregularities of the edges which occasionally curve and slant serve to soften the geometry surprising us with unexpected changes in direction. This sudden unpredictability of the work is matched by a tension and mystery created by the deep and narrow between the blocks.” Addison Parks ARTS MAGAZINE December 1979 Mr. Garmey studied at Columbia University School of Arts as well as the Columbia University School of Architecture. Besides solo and group exhibitions at Viridian, Garmey has shown at numerous galleries and sculpture sites in New York as well as throughout the United States.

NEW PAINTINGS BY GREG LINDQUIST BROOKLYN, NY PAINTER October 2 - 30, 2010
Greg Lindquist Planner's Blight (Downzoning the Finger Building) 2009 Oil and Metallic on Linen 36" x 108"	It is rare for an art exhibit in Connecticut to focus its attention solely on the urban landscape of New York state and New England (as opposed to the rural landscape of this region ). Greg Lindquist’s show on the urban dwellings of New York City, Connecticut and New York state brings long overdue attention to parts of this region that rarely get much attention from the arts community. The show is more than just a show on urban sites in our region. Just as the Parthenon of antiquity or medieval castles were inspiration for painters of classical and Romantic periods, Greg Lindquist is interested in the ruins of our times: the architectural fragments, skeletons and artifacts of a by-gone Western industrial era that has been replaced by Globalization. These places are as nearby as Brooklyn and Kent and as far as the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Although he documents his explorations of these sites with digital photography, he is more interested in unraveling this photographic documentation through the act of painting. Often on metallic surfaces, his paintings emote a sense of photographic entropy and melancholy, atmosphere and a ghostly sense of recollection and decomposition. Above all, Greg considers these paintings memorials for a present moment in transition, records of short pauses before construction, or long lulls as architecture slowly is swallowed by nature. Greg believes these sites of ruin, decay and regeneration inherently contain an unmistakably quiet beauty and he paints them this way.

“PARLOR GAMES,” A PROVOCATIVE NEW SERIES BY BROOKLYN ARTIST NIKKO SEGWICK September 4 - September 30, 2010
Nikko Sedgwick Untitled 2010 Oil on Canvas 93" x 88"	Artist Nikko Sedgwick dips into a cultural grab bag for his new series, “Parlor Games,” creating oil paintings inspired by Bruegel and Bugs Bunny with a nod to slapstick comedians and jazz luminaries. Sedgwick describes the artists and performers in his large impressionist works as springboards to explore human nature with its impulses, instincts and questions of morality. The exhibit opens at the Ober Gallery on September 4, opening reception from 4 to 6 p.m. Sedgwick, a graduate of Bard College and the Slade School of Art in London, has exhibited extensively in New York City and throughout the US since 1989. Recent shows were at Saatchi & Saatchi, and Exit Art. He also performed his audio installation, “PSA: From Hymietown to Coonesville” at Scope NY for the Basel based “Vernissage TV. After years of abstract paintings and a youth surrounded by Jackson Pollocks and Rothkos, Sedgwick’s “Parlor Game” series, begun in 2008, is figurative. He loosely credits Van Gogh and the German expressionists as his current muse. The Brooklyn artist’s new works depict enigmatic scenarios that are at once humorous, sexually charged and implicitly violent.

ALEXEY KRASNOVSKY, A RUSSIAN PAINTER OF URBAN LANDSCAPES July 24 - August 29, 2010
Alexey Krasnovsky Bedford Avenue 2010 Oil on Canvas 42" x 49"	Ober Gallery is pleased to announce a show of paintings by Alexey Krasnovsky, a Russian artist who splits his time between Dublin, Ireland and New York City. In the last two years, Krasnovsky’s works has achieved critical acclaim in the Russian art world. Most recently, Alexey’s work was included in Christies Spring Russian Art Auction in New York City. The show will feature 12 of Krasnovsky’s oil paintings completed between 1990 and 2010. The paintings are based on Krasnovsky’s trips to Mexico City, New York City and Austin Texas.

GALLERY SELECTIONS May 22 - July 21, 2010
Greg Lindquist THE EDGE of the Physical Landscape (And Social Fabric) 2009 Oil and Metallic on Linen 36" x 108"	Ober Gallery is pleased to present a show entitled "Gallery Selections" featuring the following artists: Peter Acheson Carol Anthony Ira Barkoff Frank Bauer Lisa Brody Elena Figurina Barbara Friedman Margaret Grimes Susan Grossman David Ivie Scott Kling Mallory Lake Greg Lindquist Vladimir Migachev Andrei Roiter William Thomson

NEW PAINTINGS BY JACOB WILLIAMS, A BROOKLYN PAINTER, IN SHOW ENTITLED “POSSESSION” April 17 - May 20, 2010
Howl Mantis Gun	Jacob Williams, whose works will be on exhibit at Ober Gallery beginning April 17th, explores the nature of "possession" in contemporary and historical contexts. The paintings of the young Brooklyn artist lay bare "demonic possession" as depicted in American pop-culture. Williams' sculpture focuses on "possesion" in the “American capitalist landscape” with consumers "possessed" by the urge to seek personal fulfillment through the acquisition of ever more products and brands. The juxtaposition of Williams' paintings and sculpture creates a powerful dialogue on the nature of American society as it embarks on the new millenium.

GALLERY SELECTIONS January 29 - March 28, 2010
Greg Lindquist Void (Wholesold Space) 2007 Oil on Linen 18" x 36	Ober Gallery is pleased to present a show entitled "Gallery Selections". The show features works by Peter Acheson, Carol Anthony, Katherine Bradford, Al Held, Geoffrey Heyworth, Alexey Krasnovsky, Greg Linquist, Vladimir Nemukhin, Aga Ousseinov, Pat Passlof, Leonid Sokov, and Paul Weingarten.

WOLVES AND THE CALL OF THE WILD November 26, 2009 - January 15, 2010
Allen Blagden The Scout Watercolor 22" x 30"	When Allen Blagden and Ober Gallery director Rob Ober began discussing an exhibit, Ober asked if the artist had ever produced a body of work on a single subject. They soon discovered a shared interest, passion and concern for endangered wolves. The result two years later, “Wolves and the Call of the Wild, ” a striking exhibit of 25 new portraits of the American wolf in watercolors, oils and graphite opening at the Ober Gallery in Kent, CT on November 26, continuing through January 15, 2010. The opening reception is Saturday, November 28, from 4 to 7 p.m. A Lakeville, CT native, Blagden attended Hotchkiss, majored in art at Cornell, and was one of a select group of 35 budding artists in the Yale/Norfolk 1961 summer program. In his oral history for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Chuck Close related the antics of his fellow classmates that included Phillip Guston, Brice Marden, and Allen Blagden, who he notes, “Is now a very successful realist painter in an Andrew Wyethy kind of way.” “When a wolf looks you in the eye,” Blagden said, “you sense its intelligence and wisdom.” His intense feeling for wolves is strikingly portrayed in his paintings, conveying the same emotional impact. In addition to the paintings, there is a signed poster with one of images from the exhibit. All proceeds from the poster sales will be donated to Mission: Wolf, the nonprofit rescue and educational facility in Westcliffe, Colorado that inspired the exhibit. Blagden’s nature paintings have been featured in galleries throughout the United States and are represented in major museum and private collections, including those of David Rockefeller and Raymond Learsy.

TRANSIT October 30 - November 26, 2009
Vladimir Nasedkin France, Structures 2007 Mixed Media on Paper 43 ½" x 29 ½" _________________________ Tanya Badanina White Garments 2009 Mixed Media 65" x 45"	In keeping with our commitment to exploring Russian contemporary art, I am pleased to present this exhibition entitled “Transit” featuring the drawings, paintings and sculpture of two Russian artists, Tanya Badanina and Vladimir Nasedkin. I am especially excited about this show because it marks a turning point for the gallery. It inaugurates the gallery’s Russian Artists in Residence Program. The program, which invites one or two selected artists every year to live and work in New York, was created for the purpose of giving a Russian artist the opportunity to produce a new body of work for exhibition in the United States. John Bowlt, professor and director of the Slavic studies program at the University of Southern California and one of the leading authorities on Russian art, has written the catalogue essay. John’s book, Kazimir Malevich, 1878-1935, is only one of several books he has written on Russian art and culture. He has contributed to several museum catalogues, including most notably portions of the Guggenheim Museum’s book, Amazons of the Russian Avant Garde.

SALLY PETTUS, ENCOUNTERS IN THE NATURAL WORLD September 19 - October 25, 2009
Sally Pettus Shadows on a Beech Tree 2008 Oil on Canvas 36" x 36"	Ober Gallery is pleased on present new paintings by Sally Pettus. The opening reception took place on Saturday, September 19th from 4-7 pm.

GERMAN ARTIST SIGMAR POLKE AND NY ARTIST JOEL PERLMAN JULY 17 - SEPTEMBER 13, 2009
Sigmar Polke Preisvergleich 2001 100cm x 69cm Lithograph	Sigmar Polke is recognized as one of the most important and influential figures on the artistic scene today. Although Polke’s work shares a similar outlook and sensibility to American Pop art, Polke’s work reflects a different relationship to consumerism than his American counterparts. Instead of touting the glories of modern life, Polke “often distorts or disrupts the ready-made iconography, investing it with a personal message. His parodies of politics, social conventions, and established artistic and cultural values reveal a joyful cynicism that is unique.” (Sigmar Polke catalog, MOMA, 1999) Ober Gallery will be featuring 10 of Polke’s lithographs. As evidenced by his recent show at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany Polke’s editions are not something the artist "does on the side". They highlight the reproductive techniques which his paintings also return to time after time: printing, complete with raster dots, photographs and Xeroxes. “The editions literally render what the paintings simply translate. But they also translate what the artist himself has painted, or anticipate it. The editions are an important element in Polke's enquiry into the representation and duplication of the world.” (Museum Ludwig Catalog) Joel Perlman has been “creating complex sculptures out of steel, bronze, and aluminum since the early 1970's. While minimalism was the predominant style of his genration, Perlman chose to push his forms into ever-more complicated, gravity defying, configurations. Though he shares certain qualities with his peers - the thrill of danger in a Richard Serra, the blue-collar heroism of Mark diSuervo - Perlman always investigates with originality. He expands, rather than appropriates, enriching our experience with industrial materials. It took three decades for Perlman to pick up a circle, a shape he always believed too perfect to use. Its deliberate addition pumps unexpected motion and energy into his sculptures. Even his more modest scale pieces, roosting atop pedestals, have the buzz of machinery, hard at work. They recall the collages and maquettes of Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian Constructivists, who like Perlman, admired the creative ingenuity of industry, without imitating the deadening appearance of automation”. (Barbara Pollack for Sculpture.Org)

IRA BARKOFF: NEW PAINTINGS JUNE 12 - JULY 15, 2009
Ira Barkoff Tree Glade 2008 Oil on Canvas 32" x 44"	Ober Gallery is pleased to present new paintings by Ira Barkoff. The opening reception took place on Saturday, June 13, from 3-6 pm.

LAKEVILLE LANDSCAPE PAINTER, KAREN LESAGE MAY 14 - JUNE 11, 2009
Karen LeSage Long View July 2009 Oil on Canvas 56" x 44"	Ober Gallery is pleased to present paintings by Karen LeSage, an important landscape painter from Lakeville, CT Dan Shaw of Rural Intelligence writes, “You might call Karen LeSage’s work Abstract Impressionism, for her canvases are explorations and evocations of color, brushstroke and light. In her first exhibit at Ober Gallery, she explores and contemplates the rural landscape in a way that is both singular and universal. It is her study of light, form and open space that makes these paintings at once familiar and revelatory. In the plein air tradition, she begins each painting outdoors- “collecting light”, she says- then returns to her studio where she can approach her subject from a more abstract perspective, working intensely with the colors she's seen and their dialogue with one another. To make sure the paintings remain representational, she will consult her 7-year-old son, Elijah. "I'll ask him, “what do you see?’ If he says ‘a field’ or ‘mountains’, I know I am within the range. I am interested in minimalism and color-field painting, but want these to be recognizable as landscapes." The real world informs but does not intrude upon LeSage's work. There is an implicit understanding between the artist and the viewer that she is liberating us from our prosaic way of looking at the world. She presents the serenity of the rural landscape in a modern way--the soul of Henry David Thoreau crossed with the eye of Mark Rothko. These transcendent landscapes are both traditional and avant garde: They are literally and figuratively a breath of fresh air. Dan Shaw was a founding editor of the The New York Times Sunday “Styles” section, features editor of House & Garden, and deputy editor of HomeStyle and O at Home magazines. He writes for publications that include Elle Décor, Martha Stewart Living, House Beautiful, O: The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple.and Berkshire Living. He regularly writes the “Habitats” column for The New York Times Sunday Real Estate section, and is the co-founder and co-editor of Rural Intelligence.com.

RUSSIANS: FROM MALEVICH TO KABAKOV April 11 - May 13, 2009
Elena Figurina By the Tree 1989 Oil on Canvas 111cm x 90cm	I am pleased to announce that Ober Gallery will be featuring a show entitled “RUSSIANS: FROM MALEVICH TO KABAKOV”. The show represents an effort to introduce the American public to the most important artistic developments in Russian art from the early part of the twentieth century to today. These artistic developments include Suprematism, Abstract Expressionism, Realism, Conceptualism and Primitivism. The show is divided into three parts: the Russian avant garde of the 1920s, the Nonconformist period of the 1970-90 period, and contemporary trends. Highlights from the show include a stunning “suprematist” drawing from 1914 by Kazimir Malevich, a 1972 abstract oil painting by Nonconformist painter Evgeny Rukhin, 5 ink drawings done in 1973 by the founder of Russian Conceptualism, Ilya Kabakov, and arguably the most important painting by Russian primitivist, Elena Figurina. Six of the fifteen artists in the show participated in the Guggenheim Museum show, “Russia” in 2005. This show promises to be one of the most important shows of Russian art in the United States in 2009.

SPRING SELECTIONS March 7 - April 1, 2009
Douglas Wirls Botanical #5 2008 Pastel on Polyester Drafting Film 42" x 30"	The show will feature works by several artists from Connecticut including Allen Blagden from Lakeville, Debra Losada from Sharon, Peter Kirkiles from Kent and James Woodruff from Cornwall. The show will also feature NY artists Peter Acheson, Stanley Boxer, Geoffrey Heyworth, Sandra Lerner, Colleen Randall, Luigi Terruso, Douglas Wirls, and David Wooddell. Vermont native, Joseph Salerno will also feature several works.

WINTER SELECTIONS Elena Figurina, Barbara Friedman, Margaret Grimes, David Ivie, Alexey Krasnovsky, Arnout Killian, Joseph Salerno January 15 - March 1, 2009
Joseph Salerno Passage 3.28.08 2008 Oil on Board 6" x 14"	Winter Selections features two New Englanders, two Russians, a Dutchman, a New Yorker, and an American living in England. Joseph Salerno, a native of Vermont, features some of the most compelling New England landscapes I have seen in recent memory. Margaret Grimes and David Ivie’s highly textured paintings are among my favorites in this show. Elena Figurina’s primitive figures astonish us with their color and simple forms. Newcomer, Arnout Killian, a native of Holland, features three powerful hyper-realist paintings. Alexey Krasnovsky returns with two bold paintings of New York. An extraordinary painting by Barbara Friedman completes the show.

FORCES OF NATURE November 1 - December 18, 2008
Alexey Krasnovsky Bedford Street, Green Point Brooklyn 2008 48" x 60"	English painter David Ivie’s dark, haunted, faux-naïve paintings evoke eighteenth century graveyard tales of gothic imagination: night, death, ruin and ghosts. As the art critic Maureen Mullarkey writes “The pleasure of David Ivie’s paintings — call it a frisson — lies in the difference between the seeming innocence of his depictions and couched suggestions of something darker, more disquieting. Trained in Jungian psychology, the ideas of Carl Jung are not far beneath the surface of these densely impastoed paintings.” Russian Non-Conformist painter, Alexey Krasnovsky’s quite, lonely paintings do not reflect the tempestuous circumstances of his early life. At age 33, Krasnovsky, on a trip to Moscow from his home in Saint Petersburg, sprinted through the tunnel of the American Embassy and explained “I just want to paint. I don’t want limits put on me.”A humble, modest man, Alexey finds his rewards in modest scenes. Splitting his time between Ireland and the United States, he concentrates on the cities and towns of his new life. His appreciation of mood and atmosphere draws you into each scene. And every painting seems to be affected by far off memories of his life in Russia. In many respects his paintings represent the intersection between his old and new life. Put simply, his paintings are dreams of yearning – the yearning of an outsider in a new land who cannot forget the fragments of his earlier life.”As he says “the scenes I paint reflect the heartbeat of my own sadness.” New York painter, Katherine Bradford will be featuring works from her “boat series”. This series employs the motif of ships as a metaphor to explore the voyages we are all caught up in as we move through life. New York Times art critic, Roberta Smith recently described Bradford’s paintings as “beautifully made, sincerely felt and distinguished by a special talent for schematizing nature into small ruggedly made abstractions that are at once poetic and humorous.” Her work is represented in several major collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum. It’s not every day that one encounters an artist whose work so accurately reflects the person as in the pictures of Paul Weingarten. The passionate intensity of the work, the awe of nature, the storminess and sweetness are there to see. Paul paints from his innermost feelings. He is a true expressionist. The intensity and integrity of the person is behind all the work. That is one of the reasons why I’m sure critics like Clement Greenberg became so attached to Weingarten’s paintings. His work is in many important collections, including The Museum of Fine Art in Houston and the High Museum in Atlanta.

NEW YORK PAINTER TRACEY JONES October 2 - October 29, 2008
Tracey Jones Sign 2 2008 Oil on Canvas 48" x 72"	In the miasma of today’s art world, it is exciting to find an artist proud to call herself a painter. Tracey Jones works in the honorable tradition of Van Eyck whose addition of oil to the preparation of paint six hundred years ago enabled generations of artists to apply glossy colors in transparent layers or 'glazes' with a pointed brush and/or with a palette knife to the canvas. Used initially for portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, oil painting has nevertheless been the favored medium of such 20th century abstractionists as Kandinsky, Mondrian, de Kooning, and Resnick.

ALEKSANDER KONSTANTINOV RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVIST August 15 - September 24, 2008
Aleksander Konstantinov Aqueduct 2008 Outdoor Installation: Hohenems, Austria Wood and Steel 4 x 30 x 1m	I am delighted to welcome Aleksander Konstantinov back from Moscow for his second show with us. A constructivist, Aleksander is expanding on an important tradition in Russian art, a movement cut short by Stalin's rise to power in 1929. His work, particularly his outdoor installations, represents an extension of that movement. Lightly manipulating such diverse materials as photographs, paper, film, metal and wood, he has emerged as the most important constructivist in Russia today. Last year Aleksander was featured in the spring Russian Contemporary Art auction at Sotheby's in London. A book devoted to his outdoor installations in Europe and Russia was recently published. His work is featured in the Russian Museum, Pushkin Museum and Tretyakov Gallery. The artist will be at the opening. I look forward to seeing you at this remarkable exhibition.

TEXAS ARTIST ROBERT JESSUP PAINTINGS FEATURED IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART June 25 - July 30, 2008
Robert Jessup Baking Cookies 2007-08 Oil on Canvas 74" x 80"	Robert Jessup's paintings describe a place neither here nor there; part memory, part imagination. They are both awkward and beautiful, and they show us what we might otherwise only see with our eyes closed. That is unless you come from a place where people balance fish or teacups on their heads, or push boulders uphill while nude. With the imagination of a child and skill of a seasoned painter, Robert Jessup creates paintings that have the unique ability to both unsettle and delight us at the same time. Mr. Jessup's paintings are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; as well as many public, private, and corporate collections.

BARBARA FRIEDMAN New York Artist April 24 - June 22, 2008
Barbara Friedman Vagabond 2002 Oil on Linen 40" x 30"	Lilly Wei, an essayist and critic who writes regularly for Art in America and is a contributing editor of Artnews writes, “The theme of disappearance and loss, time and memory is present in one way or another in all of Barbara Friedman’s paintings. Friedman, who lived—and still does, very near the site of the World Trade Center was overwhelmed at first and responded to the attack tentatively, obliquely. Lightening her palette, using colors that were pale, pastel, less bold than in previous ventures, gradually softening, then blurring the contours of her images, tempering reality, Friedman depicted scenes on the verge of dissolution, seen as if through a scrim, filtered to suggest indistinct, incomplete subjective memory”. In short, these remarkable paintings, with their Richter-like blurs, seem to exist in both the past and present. They are some of the most hauntingly beautiful paintings I have witnessed in some time. An eight-page catalogue accompanies the show.

SPRING SELECTIONS SHOW WORKS BY JOSEPH BEUYS, CARROLL DUNHAM, ELENA FIGURINA, MARY HEILMANN, GERHARD RICHTER and FRANK STELLA March 6 - April 20, 2008
Frank Bauer Die Letze Nacht des Unique Harding Meyer Untitled	Ober Gallery is pleased to present a show entitled “SPRING SELECTIONS” featuring works by artists from the Gallery collection. Highlights include a stunning painting by Russian non-conformist painter, Elena Figurina. Four new gallery acquisitions by Frank Stella, Mary Heilmann, Joseph Beuys and Litchfield County resident Carroll Dunham will be featured as well.

GALLERY SELECTIONS SHOW WORKS BY FRANK STELLA, AL HELD, ROBERT DE NIRO SR., MILTON RESNICK, GEORGE MCNEIL, PAUL RESIKA, AND ALLEN BLAGDEN December 15, 2007 - March 2, 2008
Milton Resnick Untitled 1990 Acrylic on Paper 28" x 18"	Ober Gallery is pleased to present a show entitled “Gallery Selections” featuring works by artists from New York, New England and Russia. The show features abstract works as well as landscapes. Highlights include a large painting by Valery Koshlyakov, a Russian artist featured at the 2005 Guggenheim show Russia! A large piece by Frank Stella dedicated to Joseph Beuys is also featured prominently. A beautiful piece by Al Held from 1962 will hang next to the Stella. The show will also include two beautiful watercolors by Lakeville native Allen Blagden.

TOM GOLDENBERG LEGENDARY NEW YORK LANDSCAPE PAINTER November 3 - December 2, 2007
Tom Goldenberg Gallatinville 2005-2007 Oil on Linen 40" x 60"	Hilton Kramer, the widely respected New York art critic, has described Tom Goldenberg as "one of the most accomplished painters on the current scene". In the words of Hilton Kramer, Tom brings to his landscapes a classical rather than a romantic or expressionist sensibility. He "has been drawn to the kind of terrain that lends itself to a classical order, the countryside of Dutchess County, north of Manhattan in New York State. With its carefully tended farms, rolling hills and spacious woodlands, this is anything but an untamed wilderness. If we sometimes glimpse a house or barn or some other man-made structure in these paintings, it remains subordinated to the rhythms and divisions of the land and the changing light of the seasons. "His colors can give off the sense of warm, lazy sunshine we all know from country days in August or the bright light that belies the sudden chill of fall days. They are pure evocation".

GEOFFREY DORFMAN AND MOR PIPMAN TWO NEW YORK ABSTRACT ARTISTS October 6 - November 1, 2007
Geoffrey Dorfman Newton's Pharmacy Mor Pipman Heads	Geoffrey Dorfman is an artist for whom the flame of abstract expressionism or the New York School, still burns bright. Dorfman's paintings are about painting, or the creative process. Unlike so many contemporary artists work, no narrative, irony or theory underpins his work. Dorfman, a pure painter, allows the application of paint and his own almost hyper-conscious state dictate the direction or shape a painting takes. As he says, "If the painting begins to look like something besides paint, like sky or water, I change it." Mor Pipman, a sculptor, who specializes in stone, shares a similar sensibility to Dorfman in that she allows the "process of shaping stone" determine what shape or spirit the object takes. In short, Dorfman and Pipman are linked in an artistic outlook, a viewpoint that seeks to unravel the mystery of painting by allowing the sheer process of painting and sculpting determine the final creative outcome.

SARAH PLIMPTON NEW YORK ABSTRACT PAINTER September 7 - October 4, 2007
Sarah Plimpton Time to Go 2006 Oil on Linen 30" x 36"	Sarah Plimpton has been painting for some 30 years. As a child, Sarah became interested in the inner workings of nature. This led her to study biology at Smith College and later Harvard Medical School. When she found that the questions she was beginning to ask would not be answered by science, she explored the arts. But as she freely admits, it was not until her time in Paris that she really began painting. She met the artist Tal-Coat, whose pared-down spacial abstractions significantly influenced her development as a painter. Like Kasimir Malevich, the great Russian/Ukrainian painter, Plimpton's abstract landscapes take us to another world. However, whereas Malevich's paintings are oriented in the "cosmos", Sarah's paintings seem closer to earth, as evidenced by the earth-tone colors that occupy her paintings. Plimpton describes her painting as some sort of Zen, a primitive alphabet set against a mysterious landscape, originating from her ongoing fascination with the human need and propensity to create forms. As she writes, "look around the world at some of the structures made by people with no formal schooling. There has to be some innate eye for form in the human brain. Education can ruin vision." It is no wonder that Sarah has made frequent visits to see paintings in prehistoric caves in France and aboriginal works in Australia. "From a trip to Africa in 1978, she recalls vividly how struck she was by Liberian homes with painting on mud-smeared surfaces - decoration even created by "using imprints of their hands on the walls." Sarah's paintings are quiet, but the drama that unfolds in them is quite stirring. Tension in her paintings is derived from the interplay of geometric and natural shapes, sometimes resolved, sometimes evolving. Shapes struggling, awkwardly at times, to find their place in an ever changing landscape. Her earth tones, almost prehistoric colors, re-inforce this drama by conveying a sense of timelessness and universality. She has said her goal is to take the viewer somewhere else. She does that and helps us understand that this "somewhere else" may not be far away. She is represented in many important collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscript Library.

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY SHOW HENRI MATISSE, MILTON RESNICK AND GALLERY ARTISTS July 26 - August 16, 2007
Henri Matisse Atelier D'Artiste Milton Resnick Untitled Harding Meyer Untitled	Ober Gallery is pleased to present a show entitled “A Salon Show with Henri Matisse and…” featuring works by European, Russian, German, New England, and New York artists. The show features a beautiful crayon on paper work done by Matisse in Nice, France in 1940. Other highlights include two original works by Milton Resnick, one of the most important American abstract expressionists of the 1950s. Susan Rothenberg is featured prominently in a large woodcut piece. Two Sigmar Polke prints will also be displayed. Polke was the honored artist at the Venice Biennale this past spring.

TOM FERRARA AND COLLEEN RANDALL June 30 - July 25, 2007
Tom Ferrara Superstition Colleen Randall Inflorescence #33	Tom Ferrara was Willem de Kooning’s studio assistant for eight years, "a fact that inevitably influences any discussion of his work." Yet, in the words of Gerard Haggerty, an art critic for Artnews, "the lessons he learned from the master involve questions of attitude and commitment rather than look or style". Whereas de Kooning’s paintings tend to me more organic, Ferrara’s work is more architectural. But like De Kooning, Ferrara’s paintings evoke a "journey-like quality". But it is a journey without a clear beginning or end. The journey even seems to run in two directions, as evidenced by the outward and inward pull in his paintings. Put differently, one never really knows at what stage of the journey one is in when one enters Ferrara’s world. Like Tom Ferrara, Colleen Randall’s work is rooted in the American abstract tradition of the 1950s and 60s. Like Tom, Colleen’s paintings evoke "a journey-like quality". But whereas Tom’s painting seems more interested in investigating our journey on earth, above ground so to speak, Colleen seems more interested in taking us on a journey into the physical world we occupy. As a result, Colleen’s paintings are richly textured and the colors seem to be literally pulled from the earth.

IRA BARKOFF IMPORTANT CONNECTICUT LANDSCAPE ARTIST May 25 - June 25, 2007
Ira Barkoff Big Cloud 2006 Oil on Canvas 44" x 44"	Ira Barkoff became fascinated with landscape painting from the time his parents took to him to the Catskills in the summers, where he painted his first landscape at an early age. "When I was ten years old . . . and looking up at a blue sky with fast moving cotton ball clouds. I thought, ‘I have to remember this sky . . . remember every single cloud.’" Although not known to him at the time, the Catskill Mountains were the stamping ground of the Hudson River School of landscape painters led by Thomas Cole in the nineteenth century. It was the kind of painting that depended upon a quiet observation of fact, to be sure, but in its celebration of nature, it touched on the romantic as well. Barkoff began with a quiet observation of fact, but soon a more romantic sensibility emerged in which the expression of his ideas was based more on memory and imagination. "My landscapes," he said, "are not literal depictions of New England . . . but are distillations of visual / emotional memories." Barkoff’s influences range from Rembrandt (especially the great pen and ink drawings), to J.M.W. Turner’s late unfinished paintings, John Constable’s studies of clouds, the poetic subjectivity of Twachtman’s landscapes and Monet’s Water Lily Series, to name just a few. He admires the attitude of Caspar David Friedrich and the color of Van Gogh. Later, he embraced the gestural painting of Richard Diebenkorn and Willem Dekooning, and more recently the premier coup paintings of Edwin Dickinson (1891-1978), whose landscapes were often finished in two to four hours. Many of Barkoff’s twenty plus pictures in the Ober Gallery exhibition were painted that way, of which Shimmer, with its quick, gestural brushwork and sense of light and space, is an outstanding example -- as is The Color Purple, with its yellow foreground and Rothkoesque format and color feeling. Working in his studio in natural light, Barkoff paints to music -- usually opera, sometimes Chopin, which, he says helps put him "in the zone," to keep to his romantic point of view. The high-energy work, Tree Rows, exuding a sense of driving through the landscape at speed, was painted in those conditions, as was the large, Big Cloud, as well as Summer, the latter two recalling the work of Constable or the seventeenth century Dutch masters. Yet, despite his habit of working from imagination and memory, Barkoff’s landscapes still manage to evoke an extraordinary sense of place and if many of his landscapes are painted en premier coup, they evoke an extraordinary stability and presence. In addition, he has transformed his influences into something entirely his own. It is clearly apparent that here is a lyric artist who has created memorable images and possesses a quiet originality, quietly achieved. Essay by Richard Boyle, Art Historian

JESSE McCLOSKEY May 4 - 24, 2007
Jesse McCloskey Incident in the Park 2005 Oil on Canvas 50" x 60"	I was introduced to the work of Jesse McCloskey several years ago by Steven Harvey, the Director of Contemporary Art at New York's Salander O'Reilly Galleries. Knowing my fondness for the work of George McNeil and Paul Georges, Steven urged me to see Jesse's work. When I visited Jesse at his Williamsburg studio, I knew I was looking at work by a visionary. His landscapes explore the dark narrative of the subconscious. Dreamlike, full of provocative and disturbing images, they are reminiscent of the Surrealists. Objects such as scissors, sharp teeth, and empty liquor bottles create a foreboding. The viewer is prompted to ask, wherein the danger, why the anxiety. Yet there is a "lightness", too. Comic-like characters and lots of birds, perhaps witnesses to the crime... serve to offset the darkness. Jesse is not the first artist to embrace cartoon-like characters. Roy Lichtenstein and Carrol Dunham are only two of several American artists whose work bore the influence of cartoonagraphy, as explored this month at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. When I asked Jesse about the source of his vision, he cited 18th century woodblock prints of Salem, and he also pointed to a small postcard hanging on his studio wall of an illustration of the story of "Little Red Riding Hood". "The rest..." he said " is from my dreams."

KENT ARTIST TOLLEF RUNQUIST March 30 - April 29, 2007
Tollef Runquist Untitled 2007 Latex on Canvas 48" x 48"	Ober Gallery is pleased to present paintings and works on paper by Tollef Runquist, a figurative expressionist and a native of Kent. I first encountered the work of Tollef Runquist more than ten years ago at Jacques Kaplan’s gallery in Kent. The “lines” in Tollef’s charcoal drawings had this jagged, tortured quality about them that brought to mind the work of the early twentieth century Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele. Several years later, I visited Tollef’s studio. By then one could see the influence of de Kooning and Diebenkorn in his oeuvre. Ten years later, I am pleased to showcase Tollef’s paintings in his first Connecticut solo show. I am committed to showing young talented artists like Tollef, particularly one as gifted and committed as he. Tollef’s paintings are not for the faint-hearted. They are intensely personal, honest, and hard-edged, with much to say about the human condition. I think you will agree that his paintings are hauntingly beautiful.

THE NEO-ROMANTIC GROUP February 9 - March 7, 2007
Paul Weingarten Red Clouds 1986 Oil on Canvas 48" x 36"	The artists who comprise the Neo-Romantic Group (Ivana Salander, Andrey Tamarchenko, Paul Weingarten ) are united in their allegiance to a core set of principles. Above all, they present themselves naked and true, with life as their primary celebration, honesty as their modus operandi, and a respect and reverence for the inspired masters of all ages. They present an art that rejects pseudo avant- garde fashion. The Neo-Romantics aim for a purity of expression that emanates not from intellectual theory but from pure emotion. For the Neo-Romantics, artists “do now know because they are told, they know because they experience.” Descartes said, “I think therefore I am.” The Neo-Romantics prefer “I feel therefore I live.” These artists carry out this endeavor with depth, with openness, with awe before nature, with a respect for tradition and a renewed vision of life. They employ both spontaneity and craftsmanship born of the need to represent in no uncertain terms, that which is life itself.

MATTHEW LOPAS ELEVEN PAINTINGS OFFERING A PENETRATING LOOK AT THE REALITY OF AMERICAN SUBURBAN LIFE January 2 - February 6, 2007
Matthew Lopas 12. Hays Hill Night 2005 Oil 24" x 31"	Ober Gallery is pleased to present works by Chicago born artist, Matthew Lopas. Matthew Lopas’s work brings to mind the art of Edward Hopper and Fairfield Porter. A graduate of Yale University’s prestigious M.F.A. program, where he studied with William Bailey, Lopas’s work of interiors capture the reality of American suburban life. The reception is Saturday, December 16th from 3-6 pm.

RUSSIAN ARTIST, ALEKSANDER KONSTANTINOV WIDELY CONSIDERED THE MOST IMPORTANT RUSSIAN NEO CONSTRUCTIVIST/MINIMALIST ARTIST December 14, 2006 - January 2, 2007
Aleksander Konstantinov Greece Installation	Ober Gallery is honored to present works by Russian artist, Aleksander Konstantinov. Aleksander Konstantinov is a leading Moscow artist, well known in Russia and Europe. His works are part of many major European and Russian museums and public collections, including the Pushkin Museum and State Tretyakov Gallery. His works, created in a variety of techniques from traditional drawings and fine color engravings to the newest computer technologies and industrial materials, are reminiscent of rulers, calculators, radars, bureaucratic forms and other tools of measurement and control. His style is based on strict logic, but he deliberately allows various mistakes of the system such as link omissions or breaking of the rhythm to emphasize the free and unpredictable nature of human intellect. In addition to gallery scale pieces, Konstantinov creates gigantic outdoor installations, placing his structures on facades of buildings. During the last four years he realized more than twenty such projects in countries like Austria, Greece, France, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Russia, Ukraine, and USA. Konstantinov incorporates his gigantic “drawings” made of plastic sheets and tape into a land- or townscape breaking the boundary between real and depicted. These works carry multilayered cultural and historical associations that involve the viewer in a game of simulation and substitution of meaning. By employing interplay of cultural references Konstantinov brings irony into his gallery scale pieces and large scale installations. His works are visual jokes with a profound symbolic meaning, reflecting on our everyday life and culture. Show dates are December 14 – January 2. The reception is Saturday, December 16th from 3-6 pm.

KATHERINE BRADFORD NEW YORK/MAINE PAINTER FEATURING FIFTEEN BOAT PAINTINGS November 24 - December 14, 2006
Katherine Bradford Two Ships Burning 2006 Oil on Canvas 21" x 24"	Ober Gallery is pleased to present fifteen boat paintings by the artist Katherine Bradford. Bradford is a painter who splits her time between New York and Maine. She began as an abstract painter and gradually added images to her vocabulary. Her recent work features boats, painted singly and in groups, placed in fields of colored paint that resemble both the sea and sky. In a statement about her work, the artist writes that she "seeks to tell stories of isolation, community, questing and enchantment." Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Portland Museum. She will be having a one person show in New York this spring at the Edward Thorp Gallery in Chelsea. Ken Johnson, art critic for the New York Times recently wrote about Bradford's boat paintings describing them as "whimsical...working inventively between abstraction and representation." Show dates are November 24-December 14. The reception is Saturday, November 25 from 3-6 pm.

PAUL WEINGARTEN NEW YORK EXPRESSIONIST PAINTER AND HIS PAINTINGS OF NEW YORK AND CONNECTICUT November 4 - 23, 2006
Paul Weingarten Railroad Piers 1998 Oil on Canvas 30" x 40"	Ober Gallery is pleased to present 14 paintings by noted New York expressionist painter Paul Weingarten. The paintings draw inspiration from his New York surroundings as well as the hills and lakes of Litchfield County, Connecticut. Alfred Janson, art historian and critic, writes that “this way of painting is not for the faint of heart…No preliminary drawings or oil sketches invented in the peaceful sanctuary of the studio are permitted here; only a rawness and immediacy of brush responding instantly to the impulses of the imagination.” Paul Weingarten received his undergraduate degree from New York University in 1968. He has exhibited on numerous occasions at the Salander O’Reilly Galleries in New York City. His work is in several museums including the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the High Museum in Atlanta. His work has been reviewed several times by the New York Times. Show dates are November 4 – November 23. The reception is Saturday, November 4th from 3-6 pm.

Jim Bohary New York Based Abstract Expressionist Painter October 14 - November 1, 2006
James Bohary Random Sound 1989 Oil on Canvas 63" x 67"	Ober gallery is pleased to present paintings and works on paper by Jim Bohary, a New York based Abstract Expressionist painter. The sixty-five year old painter has been painting lushly abstracted paintings for more than 30 years. A student of Philip Guston, Bohary is recognized in the New York Art world as a master of abstract expressionist painting. His paintings draw inspiration from numerous sources: New York, the beaches of Puerto Rico and Newfoundland. The result is richly textured surfaces and colors that convey layers of both memory and experience. While his work was influenced by the work of Guston, his work seems closer in spirit to the raw energy of Chaime Soutine and the buried images of Eugene Leroy. Bohary's "pursuit of expressionism" in the words of one New York art critic, "represents a new and personal experience -- no small achievement, considering its debt to modern America's first, and arguably greatest, indigenous art movement". The opening reception is Saturday, October 14, from 4-6 pm.

Tracey Jones NEW YORK ARTIST IN HER FIRST CONNECTICUT SHOW September 22 - October 12, 2006
Tracey Jones Table 10 2006 Oil on Canvas 38" x 50"	Ober Gallery is pleased to present more than 14 paintings by the seasoned New York artist, Tracey Jones, in her first Connecticut show called "Tables". Tracey Jones has pursued painting for more than three decades. Her work emerged after the emergence of “post-painterly abstraction.” While color is a major component of her work, it is the rich texture of her surfaces that holds one's attention. In the words of the noted New York critic, Robert Morgan, (contributor to Artnews, Art in America, The Village Voice and Art Press), “There is something hidden – or, I should say layered – in the intricacies of these surfaces that embodies content as something more than mere process… With a delightful touch of Dubuffet , Jones proceeds to articulate the history of Modernism in her own terms and through her own inspiration.” Show dates are September 22 – October 12. The reception is Saturday, September 23 from 4-6 pm.

Russian Art in the Twentieth Century: Then and Now September 8 - September 21, 2006
Liubov Popova Composition Gouache on Paper 1917 12 5/8" x 8 1/4"	Ober Gallery is pleased to present “Russian Art in the Twentieth Century: Then and Now,” featuring some of the most important Russian artists of the twentieth century, including two original drawings by Kazimir Malevich, and a gouache by Liubov Popova. The Popova gouache was included in a 1991 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In addition to works by Malevich and Popova, the show includes works by noted Russian artists, Eric Bulatov, Alexander Exter, Vladimir Nemukhin, Oscar Rabine, Mikhail Roginsky, Edik Schteinberg, Leonid Sokov, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Oleg Vassiliev, and Vladimir Yakovlev. Twenty-two Russian artists are included in the show. More than ten artists in the show were included in the recent Guggenheim Exhibit, "Russia!"

Eleven Contemporary Artists From Germany August 18 - September 7, 2006
A.R. Penck The Colours of the Night Frank Bauer Michiko (in Hamburg) I Maia Naveriani Woman in Grass	Ober Gallery is pleased to present a show featuring thirteen paintings by eleven diverse contemporary artists living in Germany. The show includes works by: Frank Bauer is Gerhard Richter's most recognized and acclaimed student. His neo-realist portraits of people in everyday life are captured with such precision that viewers feel a part of them. Harding Meyer's powerful expressionist portraits defy sentimentality, showing children in their most human and vulnerable state. He captures their pride, aggressiveness, shyness, innocence, and dignity. Maia Naveriani's large scale, drawings of women in their most private moments are remarkable for their precision, scale and light. Werner Schmidt's naturalistic and sometimes luscious landscapes of his native Germany range from classical to romantic. Marcus Vater and Kate Waters capture the transitory moments of life, out of the belief that these arrested moments offer insights into everyday life. Marc von Criegern's paintings are highly narrative and mysterious. Marc von Criegern projects the viewer into an unknown subtly disquieting situation. Christopher Winter uses allusions to a kitschy pop version of the Hansel and Gretel story to explore what might happen as the children lose their way. Prints by the acclaimed German artists Marcus Lupertz, A.R. Penck and Sigmar Polke close out the show.