URBAN/RURAL:
LANDSCAPES FROM CONTEMPORARY REALISTS
AN ONLINE EXCLUSIVE EXHIBITION
10 April 2020 - 10 May 2020
About the exhibition:
Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts is pleased to feature our second in a series of online/virtual exhibitions, Urban/Rural: Landscapes from Contemporary Realists. This exhibition features works by 14 Contemporary Realists from our gallery's program who masterfully approach the landscape through the medium of drawing and painting. Among the body of work included, we observe thoughtful execution, a keen sense of visual acuity, a heightened understanding of atmosphere, and deeper look at the qualities of time and place. The images within are bound by a sense of verisimilitude, a term that describes their likeness and truth in drawing and painting. Truth, however, is sometimes suspended and re-interpreted, such as in the two mirrored landscapes by Eric Green. Both views allow us to access a continual, mirrored panoramic view of a small town American landscape. At first glance, they seem completely possible as natural extensions from left to right, or vice versa, however upon closer examination, as we meander our way back and forth through the subtle shifts in Green's manipulations, we slowly call into question reality and similarity. These works are about slowness, not only in their execution with several layers of impeccably rendered colored pencil, but slowing down our awareness as viewers and spending time looking. The small, postcard sized hyperrealist micro-paintings by Ron Weis are carefully painted gems whose subjects tug at the nostalgia of 1950's technicolor travel postcards. The landscapes appear on the surface as likely renditions of existing places from a bygone era, but upon further examination, we notice unlikely distortions of depth, as Weis collages elements from different found postcard subjects into his own re-creations and paints them meticulously using quadruple aught brushes and antique binocular glasses. Scott Prior's hauntingly beautiful landscape paintings bring us to familiar dream-like places of small towns in the Northeast, which are constructed using several different reference photos from Scott's familiar environments in New England. Their intrigue and sense of reality seems as if it were held within reverie, resting on a thin wafer of memories or dreams transcending the place itself. Drenched with light and atmosphere we feel a unique sense of presence and belonging when we stand in front of a painting by Prior. Hisaya Taira's silent, hyperrealist cityscapes of New York City call us deeply into a sense of time and place, when the city that never sleeps has fallen silent for that split-second. As the observer, Taira, moves through these urban environments and waits for that quiet moment. For some, the works are snapshots of silent meditations; the in-between moments we don't often experience in the day to day of urban life. For others, they are a haunting, post-apocalyptic views; ones that feel more familiar than ever in our current, quarantined COVID-19 world.
All of the works within are leading examples of contemporary landscape painting from our family of artists at Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts. They all celebrate the moments of our deeper connection to time and place and our roots in Urban, Rural, and Suburban environments that we navigate daily. These works are also about our sense of humanness; about being present, consciously and subconsciously in the dwellings we all call Home.
John Brunelli, Gallery Director
April 2020